n/^ v* 



'"^ '* 



* . 













MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 



liy the Same Author 

ni()GRAPHK:AL 

American Bf>okmcn (1898) 

Phillips Brooks (in " Beacon Biographies," 1899) 

Life and Ixrttcrs of George Bancroft (1908) 

Life and Labors of Bishop Hare (191 1) 

Ixttcrs of Charles Elliot Norton (with Sara Norton, 

I9>j) 
George von I^ngerkc Meyer: His Life and Public 

Services ( Kyiy) 
NVemoirs of the Harvard Dead (19:0, 1921, — ) 

HISTORICAL 

Boston, the Place and the People (1903) 

Boston Common: Scenes from Four Centuries 

(1910) 
The Boston Symphony Orchestra (19I4) 
The Humane StKiety of the Commonwealth of 

NLissachusetts (1918) 
The Atlantic Monthly and Its Makers (1919) 

VKRSE 

Shadows (1897) 
Harmonies (1909) 

EDITED 

'Ihc Beacon Biographies (l I volumes, 1899- 19 10) 
The Memory of Lincoln (1899) 
Home I-etters of General Sherman (1909) 
Lines of Battle, by Henry Howard Brownell 

(191:) 
The Harvaril Volunteers in Europe (1916) 
A Scholar's letters to a Young Lady (1920) 





Mit^i. FiKi^un 



MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

J 

A CHRONICLE OF 
EMINENT FRIENDSHIPS 

DRAWN CHIEFLY FROM THE DIARIES OF 

Mrs. JAMES T. FIELDS 
BY 

M. A. DeWOLFE HOWE 



' / stay a little longer, as one stays 
To co'ver up the embers that still burn 




JVITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS 
BOSTON 



Fl2 
■S 



corrmciiT, igJi. ■▼ 

M. A. DEWOtrr. HOWE 



P«I!«TED IM THE 

United State* or Aueeica 



OCT -9 '^2 

C)CLA6b3r)9l 



Avc 



CONTENTS 

I. Preliminary 3 

II. The House and the Hostess .... 6 

III. Dr. Holmes, the Friend and Neighbor. . 17 

IV. Concord and Cambridge Visitors ... 53 
V. With Dickens in America 135 

VI. Stage Folk and Others 196 

VII. Sarah Orne Jewett 281 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Mrs. Fields Frontispiece 

From an early photograph 

A Note of Acceptance 9 

Autograph of Julia Ward Howe 

The Offending Dedication 15 

From First Edition of Hawthorne's "Oiu- Old Home" 

An Early Photograph of Dr. Holmes ... 18 

Reduced Facsimile of Dr. Holmes's 1863 Address to 
the Alumuni of Harvard 23 

From the Play-bill of the Night of Dr. Holmes's 
"great round fat tear" 24 

(Shaw Theatre Collection, Harvard College Library) 

Facsimile of the Conclusion of Ultimus Smith's 
Declaration 26 

Mrs. Fields 32 

From a crayon portrait made by Rowse in 1863 

Fields, the Man of Books and Friendships . . 34 

Louis Agassiz 48 

Hawthorne in 1857 54 

From a Letter of Hawthorne's after a Visit to 
Charles Street 61 

Emerson 86 

From the Marble Statue by Daniel Chester French in the 
Concord Public Library 

A Corner of the Charles Street Library . . 98 
From a Note of Emerson's to Mrs. Fields . .100 



Facsimile of Autoguaph Inscuiition on a Photo- 
GUAPii of Rowse's Crayon Portuait of Lowell 
GIVEN TO Fields lOG 

James Russell Ixjwell lOG 

From the crayon portrait by Uowsc in the Harvard Col- 
lege Library 

Facsimile of Lowell's " Hilldoc; and Terrier" 
Sonnet 121 

Henry Wadsworth I^)nc;fellow 124 

From a photo^fniph Uiki-n in mi(l<IU' life 

From a Note of "Dkau Whittiku" to Mrs. Fields 130 

Proposed Dedication of Wiiittii.k's "Amon(; the 
Hills" to Mrs. Fields 132 

Charles Dickens 130 

From a portrait by Francis Alcxandrr. for many yi-urs in 
the Fit-Ids houM-, and imw in the Mcottui Mu-scum of Fine 
Arts 

"The Two CHAiiLEs's." Dickens and Fechter . 140 

(Shaw Theatre Colleition, Harvanl College Library) 

Reduced Facsimile of Dickens's Dikections, Pre- 
served among THE Fields Papkus. for the Brewing 
OF Pleasant HEVf:iiAGE8 147 

Facsimile Play-bill of "The Frozen Deep," with 

Dickens as Actor-Manager 1H8 

(Shaw Theatre ('oli«-<ti()n. Harvard College Librarj') 

Facsimile Note from Dickens to Fields . . 102 
James T. Fields at Fifteen 1J)0 

From a drawing by a Fn-nch Painter 

Facsimile Note from Hooth to Mrs. Fields . . 201 

Booth as Hamlet 202 

Jefferson in the Betrothal Scene of "Rip Van 
Winkle" 208 

A Nast Cartoon of Dickens and FF.rnTER . 210 

(Shaw Theatre Collection, Harvard College Librarv) 



James E. Murdock and William Warren . .218 

Charlotte Cushman : from a Crayon Portrait . 220 
(Shaw Theatre Collection, Harvard College Library) 

RisTORi AND Fanny Kemble 222 

The photograph of Fanny Kemble was taken in Philadel- 
phia in 1863 

Christine Nilsson as Ophelia 226 

Facsimile Letter from William Morris Hunt 

TO Fields 231 

Facsimile Page from an Early Letter of Bret 
Harte's 235 

Bret Harte and Mark Twain 242 

From early photographs 

Facsimile Verses and Letter from Mark Twain 

TO Fields 248-9 

Charles Sumner 258 

From a Letter of Edward Lear's to Fields . , 279 
Sarah Orne Jewett 282 

The Library in Charles Street 284 

Mrs. Fields at the window. Miss Jewett at the right 

An Autograph Copy of Mrs. Fields's "Flammantis 

Mgenia MuNDi " before ITS Final Revision . . 287 
Mrs. Fields on her Manchester Piazza . . . 288 
Mistral, Master of "Boufflo Beel" . . . 294 
Reduced Facsimile from Letter of Henry James 299 

{Most of the photographs reproduced are in the collections of 
the Boston Athenceum and the Harvard College Library, to 
which grateful acknowledgments are made.) 



MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 
I 

PRELIMINARY 

In the years immediately before the death of Mrs. 
James T. Fields, on January 5, 191 5, she spoke to me 
more than once of her intention to place in my posses- 
sion a cabinet of old papers -^journals of her own, let- 
ters from a host of correspondents, odds and ends of 
manuscript and print — which stood in a dark corner 
of a small reception-room near the front door of her 
house in Charles Street, Boston. On her death this 
intention was found to have been confirmed in writing. 
It was also made clear that Mrs. Fields had no desire 
that her own life should be made a subject of record — 
"unless," she wrote, "for some reason not altogether 
connected with myself." Such a reason is abundantly 
suggested in her records of the friends she was con- 
stantly seeing through the years covered by the journals. 
These friends were men and women whose books have 
made them the friends of the English-speaking world, 
and a better knowledge of them would justify any ampli- 
fication of the records of their lives. In this process the 
figure of their friend and hostess in Charles Street must 
inevitably reveal itself — not as the subject of a biog- 
raphy, but as a central animating presence, a focus of 
sympathy and understanding, which seemed to make 
a single phenomenon out of a long series and wide vari- 
ety of friendships and hospitalities. 



4 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

The "blue books" — more than fifty in number — 
which Mrs. Fields used for the journals have already 
yielded many pages of valuable record to her own 
books, especially "James T. Fields : Biographical Notes 
and Personal Sketches" (1881), and "Authors and 
Friends" (1896); also even, here and there, to Mr. 
Fields's "Yesterdays with Authors" (1871). Yet she 
left unprinted much that is both picturesque and illumi- 
nating : so many of the persons mentioned in the jour- 
nal were still living or had but recently died when her 
books were written. There are, besides, many passages 
used in a fragmentary way, which may now with pro- 
priety be given complete. 

Into these manuscript journals, then, I propose to 
dip afresh — not with the purpose of passing in a mis- 
cellaneous review all the friends who crossed the thresh- 
old of the Charles Street house in a fixed period of 
time, but rather in pursuit of what seems a more prom- 
ising quest — namely, to consider separate friends and 
groups of friends in turn ; to assemble from the journals 
passages that have to do with them ; to supplement 
these by drawing now and then upon the old cabinet 
for a letter from this or that friend to Mr. or Mrs. 
Fields, and thus to step back across the years into a 
time and scene of refreshing remembrance. Many a 
friend, many a friendship, must be left untouched. In 
the processes of selection, figures of more than local 
significance will receive the chief consideration. In pas- 
sages relating to one person, allusions to many others, 
sometimes treated separately in other passages, will 



PRELIMINARY 5 

often be found, for the friendships with one and an- 
other were constantly overlapping and interlocking. 
Bits of record of no obviously great importance will be 
included, not because they or the subjects of them are 
taken with undue seriousness, but merely that a van- 
ished society, interesting in itself to those who care for 
the past and doubly interesting as material for a study 
in contrasts with the present, may have again its "day 
in court." When Fields was publishing his reminis- 
cences of Hawthorne, Lowell wrote to him: "Be sure 
and don't leave anything out because it seems trifling, 
for it is out of these trifles only that it is possible to 
reconstruct character sometimes, if not always"; and 
he commended especially the hitting of "the true chan- 
nel between the Charybdis of reticence, and the Scylla 
of gossip." Under sailing orders of this nature, self- 
imposed, I hope to proceed. 

"Another added to my cloud of witnesses," -wrote 
Mrs. Fields in her journal, on hearing, in 1867, that 
Forceythe Willson had died. Nearly fifty years of life 
then remained to the diarist, though she continued to 
keep her diary with regularity for hardly ten. Before 
her own death the cloud of witnesses was infinitely ex- 
tended. Yet new friends constantly stood ready to fill, 
as best they might, the gaps that were left by the old. 
It is not the new who will appear in the following pages, 
but those with whom Mrs. Fields herself must now be 
numbered. 



II 

THE HOUSE AND THE HOSTESS 

The fact that Henry James, in "The American 
Scene," published in 1907, and again in an article which 
appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly" and the "Cornhill 
Magazine" in July, 1915, has set down in his own ulti- 
mate words his memories of Mrs. Fields and her Boston 
abode would be the despair of anyone attempting a 
similar task — were it not that quotation remains an 
unprohibited practice. In "The American Scene" he 
evokes from the past "the Charles Street ghosts," and 
gives them their local habitation: "Here, behind the 
effaced anonymous door" — a more literal-minded 
realist might have noted that a vestibule-door contrib- 
uted the only efTacement and anonymity — "was the 
little ark of the modern deluge, here still the long 
drawing-room that looks over the water and towards 
the sunset, with a seat for every visiting shade, from 
far-away Thackeray down, and relics and tokens so thick 
on its walls as to make it positively, in all the town, the 
votive temple to memory." In his "Atlantic" and 
"Cornhill" article he refers to the house, in a phrase at 
which Mrs. Fields would have smiled, as "the waterside 
museum of the Fieldses," and to them as "addicted to 
every hospitality and every benevolence, addicted to 
the cultivation of talk and wit and to the ingenious 
multiplication of such ties as could link the upper half 



HOUSE AND HOSTESS 7 

of the title-page with the lower"; he pays tribute to 
*' their vivacity, their curiosity, their mobility, the felic- 
ity of their instinct for any manner of gathered relic, 
remnant, or tribute"; and in Mrs. Fields herself, sur- 
viving her husband for many years, he notes " the per- 
sonal beauty of her younger years, long retained and not 
even at the end of such a stretch of life quite lost ; the 
exquisite native tone and mode of appeal, which an- 
ciently we perhaps thought a little 'precious,* but from 
which the distinctive and the preservative were in time 
to be snatched, a greater extravagance supervening; 
the signal sweetness of temper and lightness of tact." 

There is one more of Henry James's remarks about 
Mrs. Fields that must be quoted, "All her implica- 
tions," he says, "were gay, since no one so finely senti- 
mental could be noted as so humorous ; just as no femi- 
nine humor was perhaps ever so unmistakingly directed, 
and no state of amusement, amid quantities of reminis- 
cence, perhaps ever so merciful." Mirth and mercy do 
not always, like righteousness and peace, kiss each 
other. In Mrs. Fields the capacity for incapacitating 
laughter was such that I cannot help recalling one occa- 
sion, near the end of her life, when an attempt to tell a 
certain story — of which I remember nothing but that 
it had to do with a horse • — involved her in such merri- 
ment that after repeated efforts to reach its "point," she 
was forced to abandon the endeavor. What I cannot 
recall in a single instance, in the excellent telling of in- 
numerable anecdotes, is unkindness, in word or sugges- 
tion, toward the persons involved in them. Mr. James 



8 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

did well to include this item in his enumeration of Mrs. 
Fields's qualities. 

Through all his lenses of memory and phrase he 
brought so vividly to one's own vision the Mrs. Fields 
a younger generation had known that, on reading what 
he had written, I wrote to him in England, then nearly 
ending its first year in the war, and must have said that 
his pages would help me, at some future day, to deal 
with these of my own, now at last taking form. Thus, 
in part, he replied : — 

'July 20/A, 1 91 5 
Your appreciation reached me, alas, but through the 
most muffling and deadening thickness of our unspeaka- 
ble actuality here. It was to try and get out of that a 
little that I wrote my paper — in the most difficult and 
defeating conditions, which seemed to me to make it, 
with my heart so utterly elsewhere, a deplorably make- 
believe attempt. Therefore if it had any virtue, there 
must still be some in my poor old stump of a pen. Yes, 
the pipe of peace is a thing one has, amid our storm and 
stress, to listen very hard for when it twitters, from afar, 
outside; and when you shall pipe it over your exhibi- 
tion of dear Mrs. Fields's relics and documents I shall 
respond to your doing so with whatever attention may 
then be possible to me. We are not detached here, in 
your enviable way — but just exactly so must we there- 
fore make some small effort to escape, even into what- 
ever fatuity of illusion, to keep our heads above water at 
all. That in short is the history of my " Cornhill " scrap. 



HOUSE AND HOSTESS 9 

The time into which Henry James escaped by "pip- 
ing" of Mrs. Fields has now grown far more remote than 
the added span of the last seven years, merely as years, 
could have made it. Remote enough it seemed to him 






jir-ujO^ 






A Note of Acceptance 

when, at the end of his reminiscences of the Fieldses, he 
recalled a small "feast" in the Charles Street dining- 
room at which Mrs. Julia Ward Howe — it must have 
been about 1906 — rose and declaimed, "a little quaver- 
ingly, but ever so gallantly, that 'Battle Hymn of the 
Republic' which she caused to be chanted half a cen- 
tury before and still could accompany with a real 
breadth of gesture, her great clap of hands and indica- 
tion of the complementary step, on the triumphant 



lo iMEMORIKS Ob' A HOSTESS 

line, 'Be swift my hands to welcome him, be jubilant 
my feet !'" 

Now it fell to my lot that night, as perhaps the young- 
est of the party, to convoy Mrs. Howe across two wintry 
bits of sidewalk into the carriage which bore her to and 
from the memorable dinner-party, and to accompany 
her on each of the little journeys. Quite as clear in my 
memory as her recitation of the "Battle Hymn" was 
the note of finality in her voice, quite free from unkind- 
ness, as she settled down for the return drive to her 
house in Beacon Street, far from a towering figure, and 
announced in the darkness: "Annie Fields has shrunk." 
The hostess we were leaving and the guest some fifteen 
years her senior, and nearing ninety with what seemed 
an immortally youthful spirit, appear, when those 
words are recalled, as they must have been before either 
was touched by the diminishing hand of age; and the 
house whose door had just closed upon us — a house 
more recently obliterated to make room for a monstrous 
garage — came back as the scene of many a gathering 
of which the little feast described by Henry James was 
but a type. 

Early in January of 191 5 this tloor, which through a 
period of sixty years had opened upon extraordinary 
hospitality, was finally closed. Since 1H66 it had borne 
the number I48. Ten years earlier, in 1856, when the 
house was first occupied by James T. Fields, afterwards 
identified with the publishing firms of Ticknor and 
Fields, and Fields, Osgood and Company, it was num- 
bered J7, Charles Street. This Boston man of books 



HOUSE AND HOSTESS ii 

and friendships, who before his death in 1881 was to 
become widely known as publisher, editor, lecturer, and 
writer, had married, in 1850, Eliza Josephine Willard, a 
daughter of Simon Willard, Jr., of the name still honor- 
ably associated with the even passage of time. She died 
within a few months, and in November of 1854 ^^ mar- 
ried her cousin, Annie Adams, not yet twenty years old, 
the beautiful daughter of Dr. Zabdiel Boylston Adams. 
For those who knew Mrs. Fields toward the end of her 
four score and more years, it was far easier to see in her 
charming face and presence the exquisite, eager young 
woman of the mid-nineteenth century than to detect in 
the Charles Street of 191 5, of which she was the last in- 
habitant of her own kind, any resemblance to the 
delightful street of family dwellings, many of them look- 
ing out over the then unfilled " Back Bay," to which she 
had come about sixty years before. The Fieldses had 
lived here but a few years when, in 1859, Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes — with the "Autocrat" a year behind 
him and the "Professor" a year ahead — became their 
neighbor at 21, subsequently 164, Charles Street. On 
the other side of them, nearer Beacon Street, John A. 
Andrew, the great war governor of Massachusetts, was 
a friend and neighbor. Across the way, for a time, lived 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich. In hillside streets near by dwelt 
many persons of congenial tastes, whose work and char- 
acter contributed greatly to making Boston what it was 
through the second half of the last century. 

The distinctive flavor of the neighborhood derived 
nothing more from any of its households than from that 



12 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

of Mr. and Mrs. Fields. Their dining-room and drawing- 
room* — that green assembling-place of books, pictures, 
music, persons, associations, all to be treasured — were 
the natural resort, not only of the whole notable local 
company of writers whose publisher was also their true 
and valued friend, but, besides, of many of the eminent 
visitors to Boston, of the type represented most con- 
spicuously by Charles Dickens. After the death of Mr. 
ImcKIs there was far more than a tradition carried on 
in the Charles Street house. Not merely for what it 
had meant, but for all that the gracious personality of 
Mrs, FicKls caused it to go on meaning, it continued 
through her lifetime — extending beyond that of Miss 
Sarah Orne Jewett, for so many years of Mrs. Fields's 
widowhood her delightful sister-hostess — the resort of 
older and younger friends, whose present thus drew a 
constant enrichment from the past. 

It was not till 1863, nearly ten years after her mar- 
riage, that Mrs. Fields, who had kept a diary during a 
visit to Europe in 1859-60 with her husband, and for 
other brief periods, applied herself regularly to this 
practice, maintained through 1876, and thereafter 
renewed but intermittently. She wrote on the cover of 
the first slender volume: "No. 1. Journal of Literary 
Events and Glimpses of Interesting People." A few 
of its earliest pages, revealing its general purpose and 
character, may well precede the passages relating, in 
accordance with the plan already indicated, to individ- 

' ./ Shelf (ij Old Books, by Mrs. Fields (1894), pictures many aspects of the 
house and its contents. 



HOUSE AND HOSTESS 13 

ual friends and groups of friends. In the first pages 
of all, on which Mrs. Fields built a few sentences for 
her "Biographical Notes," I find: — 

July 26, 1863. — What a strange history this literary- 
life in America at the present day would make. An 
editor and publisher at once, and at this date, stands 
at a confluence of tides where all humanity seems to 
surge up in little waves; some larger than the rest 
(every seventh it may be) dashes up in music to which 
the others love to listen ; or some springing to a great 
height retire to tell the story of their flight to those who 
stay below. 

Mr. Longfellow is quietly at Nahant. His translation 
of Dante is finished, but will not be completely pub- 
lished until the year 1865, that being the 600th anniver- 
sary since the death of the great Italian. Dr. Holmes 
was never in healthier mood than at present. His ora- 
tion delivered before a large audience upon the Fourth 
of July this year places him high in the rank of native 
orators. It is a little doubtful how soon he will feel like 
writing again. He has contributed much during the 
last two years to the "Atlantic" magazine. He may 
well take a temporary rest. 

Mr. Lowell is not well. He is now travelling. Mr. 
Hawthorne is in Concord. He has just completed a 
volume of English Sketches of which a few have been 
printed in the "Atlantic Monthly." He will dedicate 
the volume to Franklin Pierce, the Democrat — a most 
unpopular thing just now, but friendship of the purest 



14 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

stimulates him, and the ruin in prospect for his book 
because of this resolve does not move him from his 
purpose. Such adherence is indeed noble. Hawthorne 
requires all that popularity can give him in a pecuniary- 
way for the support of his family. 

The "Atlantic Monthly" is at present an interesting 
feature of America. Purely literary, it has nevertheless 
a subscription list, daily increasing, of 32,000. Of course 
the editor's labors are not slight. We have been waiting 
for Mr. Emerson to publish his new volume containing 
his address upon Henry Thoreau ; but he is careful of 
words and finds many to be considered again and again, 
until it is almost impossible to extort a manuscript from 
his hands. He has written but little, of late. 

'July 2S. — George William Curtis has done at least 
one great good work. He has by a gentle but con- 
tinuously brave pressure transformed the "Harper's 
Weekly," which was semi-Secession, into an anti-slavery 
and Republican journal. The last issue is covered with 
pictures as well as words which tend to ameliorate the 
condition of the colored race. Mr. Curtis's own house 
at Statcn Island has been threatened by the mob; 
therefore his wife and children came last week to New 
England. I fear the death of Colonel Shaw, her brother, 
commanding the 54th Massachusetts (colored infantry), 
will induce them to return home. His death is one of our 
severest strokes. 

July 31, 1863. — Wc have been in Concord this week, 
making a short visit at the Hawthorncs*. He has just 
Hnishcd his volume of English Sketches, about to be 



HOUSE AND HOSTESS 15 

dedicated to Franklin Pierce. It is a beautiful incident 
in Hawthorne's life, the determination at all hazards 
to dedicate this book to his friend. Mr. P.'s politics 
at present shut him away from the faith of patriots, but 
Hawthorne has loved him since college days and he will 
not relent.^ Mrs. Hawthorne is the stay of the house. 

To 
FRANKLIN PIERCE, 

AS A SLTOnr MEMORIAL OF A COLLBQE FRIEITDSTTir, PROLONGED 

THROUGH MANHOOD, AND BETAIOTNO ALL ITS VITALITT 

IN OCR AUTUMNAL TEARS, 

CMs V^luvxt (8 SnscTlbeU 

Br NATHANIEL HAWTHOR?fE. 

The Ofending Dedication 

The wood-work, the tables and chairs and pedestals, 
are all ornamented by her artistic hand or what she has 
prompted her children to do. Una is full of exquisite 
maidenhood. Julian was away, but his beautiful illu- 
minations lay upon the table. The one illustrating a por- 
tion of King Arthur's address to Queen Guinevere 
(Tennyson) was remarkably fine. 

All this takes one back into a past sufficiently re- 
mote. The 1859-60 diary of travel achieves the more 
remarkable spectacle of Mrs. Fields in conversation 
with Leigh Hunt less than two months before he died, 

^ About two months later, Mrs. Fields wrote in her diary: "Emerson says 
Hawthorne's book is 'pellucid but not deep.' He has cut out the dedication 
and letter, as others have done." 



i6 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

and reporting the very words of Shelley to this friend 
of his. They may be found in the "Biographical 
Notes" published by Mrs. Fields after her husband's 
death. Shelley says, "Hunt, we write /o:r-songs; why 
shouldn't we write hate-songs ?" And Hunt, recalling 
the remark, adds, "He said he meant to some day, 
poor fellow." Perhaps one of his subjects would have 
been the second Mrs. Godwin, for, according to Hunt, 
he disliked her particularly, believing her untrue, and 
used to say that when he was obliged to dine with her 
"he would lean back in his chair and languish into 
hate." Then, wrote Mrs. Fields, "he said no one could 
describe Shelley. He always was to him as if he came 
from the planet Mercury, bearing a winged wand 
tipped with flame." It is now an even century since 
the death of Shelley, and here we find one of the older 
generation of our own time talking, as it were, with 
him at but a single remove. Almost the reader is 
persuaded to ask of Mrs. Fields herself, "Ah, did you 
once sec Shelley plain ?" 

Thus from the records of bygone years many re- 
membered figures might be summoned ; but the evo- 
cations already made will suflice to indicate the point of 
vantage at which Mrs. Fields stood as a diarist, and to 
set the scene for the display of separate friendships 



Ill 

DR. HOLMES, THE FRIEND AND NEIGHBORS 

If any familiar face should appear at the front of the 
procession that constantly crossed the threshold of 
148, Charles Street, it should be that of Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes, for many years a near neighbor, and 
to the end of his life a devoted visitor and friend. Here, 
then, is an unpublished letter written from his summer 
retreat while Fields was still actively associated with 
the "Old Corner Bookstore" of Ticknor, Reed, and 
Fields, and in the year before his marriage with Annie 
Adams : — 

Pitts FIELD, Sept^ 6th, 1853 
My dear Mr. Fields : — 

Thank you for the four volumes, and the authors of 
three of them through you. You did not remember 
that I patronized you to the extent of Aleck before I 
came up ; never mind, I can shove it round among the 
young farmeresses and perhaps help to work off the 
eleventh thousand of the most illustrious of all the 
Smiths. 

I shall write to Hillard soon. I have been reading 
his book half the time today and with very great pleas- 
ure. I am delighted with the plan ot it — practical in- 

^ The greater part of this chapter appeared in the Yale Review for April, 
1918. 



i8 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

formation such as the traveller that is to be or that has 
been wishes for, with poetical description enough to keep 
the imagination alive, and sound American thought 
to give it manly substance. It is anything but -x flash 
book, but I have not the slightest doubt that it will 
have a permanent and very high place in travelling 
literature. Many things have pleased me exceedingly, 
— when I have read a little more I shall try to tell him 
what pleases me most^ — as I suppose like most authors 
he likes as many points for his critical self-triangula- 
tion as will come unasked for. 

Hawthorne's book has been not devoured, but bolted 
by my children. I have not yet had a chance at it, but 
I don't doubt I shall read it with as much gusto as they, 
when my turn comes. When you write tc him, thank 
him if you please for me, for I suppose he will hardly 
expect any formal acknowledgment. 

I bloomed out into a large smile of calm delight on 
opening the delicate little "Epistle Dedicatory" where- 
in your name is embalmed. I cannot remember that 
our friend has tried that pace before; he wrote some 
pleasing lines I remember to Longfellow on the ship in 
which he was to sail when he went to Europe some 
years — a good many — ago. 

Don't be too proud ! Wait until you get a prose dedi- 
cation from a poet, — if you have not got one already, — 
and then consider yourself immortal. 

Yours most truly, 

O. W. Holmes 




AN EARLY PHOTOGRAPH OF DR. HOLMES 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 19 

This letter contains several provocations to curiosity. 
"Aleck, . . . the most illustrious of all the Smiths," 
was obviously Alexander Smith, the Scottish poet of 
enormous but strictly contemporaneous vogue, in whom 
the English reviewers of the time detected a kinship to 
Tennyson, Keats, Shelley, and Shakespeare. George S. 
Hillard's new book was "Six Months in Italy," and 
Hawthorne's, "not devoured, but bolted" by the 
Holmes children, was "Tanglewood Tales." The "deli- 
cate little 'Epistle Dedicatory'" has been found elu- 
sive. 

From this early letter of Dr. Holmes a seven-league 
step may be taken to a passage in a diary Mrs. Fields 
was writing in i860, — the year following the removal 
of the Holmes household from Montgomery Place to 
Charles Street, — before her long unbroken series of 
journals began. The occasion described was one of 
those frequent breakfasts in the Fields dining-room, 
which bespoke, in the term of a later poet, the "wide 
unhaste" of the period. Of the guests, N. P. Willis 
was then at the top of his distinction as a New York 
editor ; George T. Davis, a lawyer of Greenfield, Mass- 
achusetts, afterwards of Portland, Maine, a classmate 
of Dr. Holmes, was reputed one of the most charming 
table-companions and wits of his day : the tributes to 
his memory at a meeting of the Massachusetts Histor- 
ical Society after his death in 1877 stir one's envy of his 
contemporaries ; George Washington Greene of Rhode 
Island was perhaps equally known as the friend of 
Longfellow and as the grandson and biographer of 



20 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

General Nathanael Greene ; Whipple was, of course, 
Edwin P. Whipple, essayist and lecturer; the household 
of three was completed by Mrs. Fields's sister, Miss 
Lizzie Adams. 

Thursday y September 2i, i860. — Equinoctial clear- 
ing after a stormy night and morning. Willis came to 
breakfast, and Holmes and George T. Davis, G. W. 
Greene, Whipple, and our little household of three. 
Holmes talked better than all, as usual. Willis played 
the part of appreciative listener. G. T. Davis told won- 
derful stories, and Mr. Whipple talked more than 
usual. Holmes described the line of beauty which is 
made by any two persons who talk together congenially 
thus --'"^^---', whereas, when an adverse element comes 
in, it proceeds thus /\ ; and by and by one which has 
a frightful retrograde movement, thus / . Then blank 
despair settles down upon the original talker. He said 
people should dovetail together like properly built 
mahogany furniture. Much of all this congeniality had 
to do with the physical, he said. "Now there is big 

Dr. ; he and I do very well together; I have just 

two intellectual heart-beats to his one." Willis said he 
thought there should be an essay written upon the 
necessity that literary men should live on a more con- 
centrated diet than is their custom. "Impossible," said 
the Professor, " there is something behind the man which 
drives him on to his fate; he goes as the steam-engine 
goes and one might as well say to the engine going at 
the rate of sixty miles, 'you had better stop now,' and 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 21 

so make it stop, as to say it to a man driven on by a vital 
preordained energy for work." Each man has a phil- 
osophical coat fitted to his shoulders, and he did not 
expect to find it fitting anybody else. 

At another breakfast, in 1861, we find, besides the 
favorite humorist of the day, Dr. Holmes's son and 
namesake, then a young ofiicer in the Union army, now 
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 

Sunday y December 8, 1861. — Yesterday morning 
** Artemus Ward," Mr. Browne, breakfasted with us, also 
Dr. Holmes and the lieutenant, his son. We had a 
merry time because Jamie was in grand humor and rep- 
resented people and incidents in the most incomparable 
manner. "Why," said Dr. Holmes to him afterward, 
"you must excuse me that I did not talk, but the truth 
is there is nothing I enjoy so much as your anecdotes, 
and whenever I get a chance I can't help listening to 
them." The Professor complimented Artemus upon his 
great success and told him the pleasure he had received. 
Artemus twinkled all over, but said little after the Pro- 
fessor arrived. He was evidently immensely possessed 
by him. The young lieutenant has mostly recovered 
from his wound and speaks as if duty would recall him 
soon to camp. He will go when the time comes, but 
home evidently never looked half so pleasant before. 
Poor fellows ! Heaven send us peace before long 1 

The finely bound copy of Dr. Holmes's Fourth of 
July Oration at the Boston City Celebration of 1863, 



22 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

to which the following passage refers, is one of the rari- 
ties sought by American book-collectors. It was a prac- 
tice of Dr. Holmes at this time to have his public 
speeches set up in large, legible type for his own reading 
at their delivery. One of these, an address to the alumni 
of Harvard on July 16, 1863, with the inscription, 
"Oliver Wendell Holmes to his friend James T. Fields. 
One of six copies printed," is found among the Charles 
Street papers, and contributes, like the passage that 
follows, to the sense of pleasant intimacy between the 
neighboring houses. 

Jugust 3, 1863. — Dr. Holmes dropped in last night 
about his oration which the City Council have had 
printed and superbly bound. He has addressed it to 
the "Common Council" instead of the "City Council," 
and he is much disturbed. J. T. F. told him it made but 
small consequence, and he went off comforted. One of 
the members of the Council told Mr. F. it was amusing 
to see "the Professor" while this address was passing 
through the press. He was so afraid something wouKl 
be wrong that he would C(jme in to see about it half a 
dozen times a day, until it seemed as if he considered 
this small oration of more consequence than the affairs 
of the state. Yet laugh as they may about these little 
peculiarities of "our Professor," he is a most wonderful 
man. 

In explanation of the ensuing bit, it need only be 
said that in October of 1863 Senorita Isabella Cubas 



/^l...,^^ ^^.^t^c^^-Z^ /^i^^^M.^ 







Brotkeks of the Association of the AluMxNi 

It is your misfortune and mine that you must accept 
my scr\-iccs as your presiding officer in the place of your 
honored President. I need hardly say hov/ unwillingly it is 
that for the second time I find myself in this trying position ; 
called upon to fill as I best may the place of one whose 
presence and bearing, whose courtesy, whose dignity, whose 
scholarship, whose standing among the distinguished children 
of the University, lit him alike to guide your councils and 
to grace your festivals. The name of AVinthrop has been so 
long associated with the State and with the College, that to 
sit under liis mild empire is like resting beneath one of these 
wide-branching elms, the breadth oi whoso shade is only a 
measure of the hold its roots have talceu in the soil. 

In the midst of civil strife we, the children of this our 
common mother, have come together in peace. And surely 
there never was a time when we more needed a brief respite 
in some chosen place of refuge, some unviolated sanctuary, 
from the cares and anxieties of our daily existence, than at 
this very hour. Om- life has grown haggard with excitement. 
The rattle of dimns, the march of regiments, the gallop of 
squadrons, the roar of artillery, seem to have been contin- 



Reduced facsimile of first page of Dr. Holmes's 1863 Address 
to the Alumni of Harvard 



24 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

was appearing at the Boston Theatre in "The Wizard 
Skiff, or the Massacre of Scio," and other pantomimes. 
"The Wizard Skiff," according to the "Advertiser," 
was given on the fourteenth. On the sixteenth, a char- 
acteristic announcement read: "At X past 8 Senorita 
Cubas will dance La Madrilena." The tear of Dr. 
Holmes at the spectacle may be remembered with the 
"poetry and religion" anecdote of Emerson, Margaret 
Fuller, and Fanny Ellsler. 

October i6, 1863. — Mr. F. went in two evenings since 
to find Professor Holmes. His wife said he was out. " I 
don't know where he is gone, I am sure, Mr. Fields," 
she said in her eager way, "but he said he had finished 
his work and asked if he might go, and I told him he 
might, though he would not tell where he was going." 

Yesterday the "where" transpired. "By the way," 
said the Professor, "have you seen that little poem by 
Mrs. Waterston upon the death of Colonel Shaw, 'To- 
gether' .'' It made me cry. However, I don't know how 
much that means, for I went to see the 'beautiful 
Cubas' in a pantomime the other night, and the first 
thing I knew do^^n came a great round fat tear and 
went splosh on the ground. Wasn't I provoked!" 

The next fragment is neither a letter nor a passage 
from the diary, but a bit of excellent fooling, in Dr. 
Holmes's handwriting, on a sheet of note paper. The 
meteorological records of 1864 would probably show 
that there were heavy rains in the course of the year. 



BOSTON THEATRE 



f^m STAR UHOIMD! 



SEMORlTi ISIABEI.1.4 








iwTioricii«« HR TO THB priLio iir 

ffiC2^ Another Character ! 

SREiTJItflSTE. 

WIW SCENES, MUSIC AND STARTLING MECHAN- 
ICAL EFFECTS! 

WOLFO MrW. H. EDGAR 

Wednesday Evening, October 14, 1863, 

Will be pn-formed t^ L«geiulftr> frtmi, in 3 »oto. utitled th*: 

WIZil SKIFF! 

Or— The Massacre of Scio. 

ALEXA 8ENORITA ISABELLA CUBA8 



W H EDOAR 

. . .W. H. Wlimll*7 I Micb»el « . H T)mDTon 

Court BwfUMe W. U. Hublm | Acutuiui Y O. 8»Tige 

Voo WatUlsdorf W Scmllu I Fritr B»nj 

A«BMt) N. T. P»Teiiport I P«liiw Miss BUnch* Grmy 

OuinU Greek Sulon tod Pirtt«. 
ACT nSST-OUOK FtRATBS- RKlfOBZVOCB. 
ACT ■■OOWD-THa WOABS aSJTF. 

ACtTBimD-TmRSLZnc kxplosioh or thk wtzahd-s OAV»-A»p«ir- 

•OM ofttis Wlaard's SklfT, under rull B«U-R«scae of Alex* ft Conjt«ntlii« 
*Qt of Victory , 



Of HuilcftlBAleotlons. L«»der, F. Suck. 



FROM THE PLAY-BILL OF THE NIGHT OF 
DR. HOLMES'S "GREAT ROUND FAT TEAR" 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 25 

From Dr. Holmes's interest in the tracing of Dr. John- 
son's footsteps an even century before his own, it is 
easy to imagine his fancy playing about the rainfall of 
the century ahead. I cannot find that this jeii d' esprit, 
with its entirely characteristic flavor of the "Breakfast 
Table," was ever printed by its author. 

Letter Jrom the last man left by the Deluge of the year 1 964 
to the last woman left by the same 

My dear Sole Survivoress : — 

Love is natural to the human breast. The passion 
has seized me, and you, fortunately, cannot doubt as 
to its object. 

Adored one, fairest, and indeed only individual of 
your sex, can you, could you doubt that if the world 
still possessed its full complement of inhabitants, 
823,060,413 according to the most recent estimate, I 
should hesitate in selecting you from the 4ii,53o,2o6>^ 
females in existence previous to the late accident ? Be- 
lieve it not 1 Trust not the deceivers who — but I for- 
get the late melancholy occurrence for the moment. 

It is still damp in our — I beg your pardon — in my 
neighborhood. I hope you are careful of your precious 
health — so much depends upon it ! The dodo is ex- 
tinct — what if Man — but pardon me. Let me recom- 
mend long india-rubber boots — they will excite no 
remark, for reasons too obvious to mention. 

May I hope for a favorable answer to my suit by the 
bearer of this message, the carrier-goose, who was with 



26 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

me (luring the rainy season in the top of the gigantic 
pine ? 

If any more favored suitor — What am I saying? If 









Facsimile of the Conclusion of Vliitnus Snmh's Declaration 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 27 

any recollection of the past is to come between me and 
happiness, break it gently to me, for my nerves have 
been a good deal tried by the loss of the human species 
(with the exception of ourselves) and there is something 
painful in the thought of shedding tears in a world so 
thoroughly saturated with liquid. 
I am 

(by the force of circumstances) 
Your Only lover and admirer 

Ultimus Smith 
0. W. H. Fixit. 

A few brief items of May of 1864 bring back a time of 
sadness for all the friends of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

May II, 1864. — J. T. F. went to see Dr. Holmes 
about Hawthorne's health. The latter came to town 
looking very very ill. O. W. H. thinks the shark's tooth 
is upon him, but would not have this known. Walked 
and talked with him; then carried him to "Metcalf's 
and treated him to simple medicine as we treat each 
other to ice cream." 

O. W. H. picked up a New York pamphlet full of 
sneers against Boston "Mutual Admiration Society." 
"These whipper-snappers of New York will do well to 
take care," he says; "the noble race of men now so 
famous here is passing down the valley — then who will 
take their places ! I am ashamed to know the names of 
these blackguards. There is , a stick of sugar- 
candy and , who is not even a gum-drop, 

and plenty like them." 



28 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Sunday, May I4. — Terrible days of war and 
change. . . . 

May 19. — Hawthorne is dead. 

Less than a year later came the record of another 
death — unique in that every survivor of the war-time 
seems to have remembered the very moment and cir- 
cumstances of learning the overwhelming fact. 

.Ipril 15, 1865. — Last night when I shut this book I 
wondered a little what event or person would come next, 
powerful enough to compel me to write a few words; 
and before I was dressed this morning the news of the 
assassination of the President became our only thought. 
The Presiilent, Seward, and his son ! 

Mrs. Andrew came in before nine o'clock to ask if 
we thought it would be expected of her to receive "the 
Club" on Monday. We decided "No," immediately, 
which chimed with her desire. 

The city is weighed down by sadness. But Dr. 
Holmes expresses his philosophy for the consolation of 
all. "It will unite the North," he says. " It is more than 
likely that Lincoln was not the best man for the work 
of re-construction," etc. His faith keeps him from the 
shadows which surround many. 

But it is a black day for us all. J. Wilkes Booth is in 
custody. Poor Edwin is in Boston. 

.-Ipril 22. — False report. Up to this date J. Wilkes 
Booth has not been taken. A reward of nearly ^200,000 
is set upon his head, but we believe him to have fled 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 29 

into Maryland or farther south, with some marauding 
party. 

Henry Howard Brownell, the author of "War Lyrics," 
appears in the following extract, with Dr. Holmes, 
whose high opinion of this singer of naval battle was 
set forth in print of no uncertain tone. Of Forceythe 
Willson, a poet, not yet thirty years old, of whom great 
things were expected, Mrs. Fields wrote later in the 
same volume of the journal : "He affects me like a wild 
Tennyson. ... He is an indigenous growth of our 
middle states. He was a pupil of Horace Mann, and 
appreciated him." 

April 29, 1865. — Club dinner for J. T. F. Mr. 
Brownell was present, author of "The Bay Fight," as 
Dr. Holmes's guest. Dr. H. said privately to us, "Well, 
't ain't much for some folks to do what I 'm doing for 
this man, but it 's a good deal for me. I don't like that 
kind of thing, you know. I find myself unawares in 
something the position of a lion-hunter, which is un- 
pleasant ! 11 " He has lately discovered that Forceythe 
Willson, the author of a noble poem called the " Color 
Sergeant" ["The Old Sergeant"], has been living two 
years in Cambridge. He wrote to him and told him how 
much he liked his poem and said he would like to make 
his acquaintance. "I will be at home," the young poet 
replied to the elder, "at any time you may appoint to 
call upon me." This was a little strange to O. W. H., 
who rather expected, as the elder who was extending 



so MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

the right hand, to be called upon, I suppose, although 
he did not say so. He found a fortress of a man, "shy 
as Hawthorne," and "one who had not learned that 
the eagle's wings should sometimes be kept down, as we 
people who live in the world must," said the Professor 
to me afterward. " In State" by F. W. is a great poem. 

More than a year later is found this characteristic 
glimpse of Dr. Holmes in the elation of finishing one of 
his books. 

iredtJCscJay^ Scptejiibtr 12, 1866. — After an hour J. 
went in to see Dr. Holmes. This was important. He had 
promised a week ago to hear him read his new romance, 
and he did not wish to show anything but the lively 
interest he really feels. . . . 

Jamie returned in two hours perfectly enchanted. 
The novel exceeded his hopes. No diminishing of power 
is to be seen ; on the contrary it seems the perfect fruit 
of a life. It is to be called "The Guardian Angel." 
Four parts are already completed and large books of 
notes stand ready for use and reference. Mrs. Holmes 
came in to tell Mr. Fields she wished Wendell would not 
publish anything more. He would only call down news- 
paper criticism, and where was the use. "Well, Amelia, 
I have written something now which the critics won't 
complain of. You see it's better than anything I have 
ever done." "Oh, that 's what you always say, Wendell, 
but I wish you'd let it alone!" "But don't you see, 
Amelia, I shall make money by it, and that won't come 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 31 

amiss." "No indeed, Mr. Fields, not in these times with 
our family, you know." "But there 's one thing," said 
the little Professor, suddenly looking up to Mr. Fields ; 
"if anything should happen to me before I get the story 
done, you would n't come down upon the widder for 
the money, would you now?" Then they had a grand 
laugh all round. He is very nervous indeed about his 
work and read it with great reluctance, yet desired to 
do so. He had read it to no one as yet until Mr. Fields 
should hear it. 

Wendell, his son, had just returned from England, 
bringing a young English Captain of Artillery home 
with him for the night, the hotels being crowded. The 
captain's luggage was in the entry. The Professor drew 
J. aside to show him how the straps of the luggage 
were arranged in order to slip in the address-card. 
" D' ye see that — good, ain't it ? I 've made a drawing 
of that and am going to have some made like it." 

Near the end of 1 866, Mrs. Fields, after a few words 
of realization that something lies beyond the age of 
thirty, pictures "the Autocrat" at her own breakfast- 
table, with General John Meredith Read, afterwards 
minister to Greece, and already, before that age of 
thirty which the diarist was just completing, an impor- 
tant figure in the military and political life of New York. 
A few sentences from the following passage are found 
in Mrs. Fields's article on Dr. Holmes, which appeared 
first in the "Century Magazine," and then in "Authors 
and Friends." 



32 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

It comes over me to put down here and now the fact 
that this year for the first time others perceived, as 
well as myself, that I have passed the freshness and 
lustre of youth — but I do not feel the change as I 
once thought I must — life is even sweeter than ever 
and richer though I can still remember the time when 
thirty years seemed the desirable limit of life — now it 
opens before me full of uncompleted labor, full of riches 
and plans — the wealth of love, the plans of eternity. 

Friday tnoniiug. — Professor Holmes and Adjutant 
General Read of New York (a young man despite his 
title) breakfasted here at eight o'clock. They were both 
here punctually at quarter past eight, which was early 
for the season, especially as the General was late out, at 
a ball, last night. He was only too glad of the chance, 
however, to meet Dr. Holmes, and would have made a 
far greater effort to accomplish it. The talk at one time 
turned upon Dickens. Dr. Holmes said he thought 
him a greater genius than Thackeray and was never 
satisfied with admiring his wondrous powers of observa- 
tion and fertility of reproduction ; his queer knack at 
making scenes, too, was noticeable, but especially the 
power of beginning from the smallest externals and 
describing a man to the life though he might get no 
farther than the shirt-button, for he always failed in 
profound analysis. Hawthorne, beginning from within, 
was his contrast and counterpart. But the two qualities 
which Dickens possesses and which the world seems to 
take small account of, but which mark his peculiar 
greatness, are the minuteness of his observations and 




MRS. FIELDS 
crayon portrait made by Rowse 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 33 

his endless variety. Thackeray had sharp corners in 
him, something which led you to see he could turn 
round short upon you some day, although sadness was 
an impressive element in his character — perhaps a 
sadness belonging to genius. Hawthorne's sadness was 
a part of his genius — tenderness and sadness. 

On Monday, February 25, 1867, Mrs. Fields made 
note of the Saturday Club dinner of two days before, at 
which the guests were George William Curtis, "Petro- 
leum V. Nasby," and Dr. Hayes of Arctic fame, of 
whom Mrs. Fields had written a few days before: "He 
wears a corrugated face, and his slender spirited figure 
shows him the man for such resolves and expeditions. 
We were carried away like the hearers of an Arabian 
tale with his vivid pictures of Arctic life." But appar- 
ently he was not the chief talker at the Saturday Club 
meeting, for Mrs. Fields wrote of it : " Dr. Holmes was 
in great mood for talk, but Lowell was critical and in- 
terrupted him frequently. 'Now, James, let me talk 
and don't interrupt me,' he once said, a little ruffled 
by the continual strictures on his conversation." But 
by the time that Longfellow's sixtieth birthday came 
round on the following Wednesday, Dr. Holmes was 
ready for it with the verses, "In gentle bosoms tried and 
true," recorded in Longfellow's diary, and for another 
encounter with Lowell, who also celebrated the day 
with a poem, beginning "I need not praise the sweet- 
ness of his song." Mrs. Fields's diary records her hus- 
band's account of the evening : — 



34 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

February 28, 1867. — Thursday morning. Jamie 
had a most brilliant evening at Longfellow's. A note 
came in from O. \V. H. towards night, saying he was full 
of business and full of his story, but he must go to L.'s. 
Lowell's poem in the morning had helped to stir him. J. 
reached his door punctually at eight. There stood the 
little wonder with hat and coat on and door ajar, his 
wife beside him. "I would n't let him go with anybody 
else," she said. "Mr. Fields, he ought not to go out 
tonight ; hear him, how he wheezes with the asthma. 
Now, Wendell, vchcn will you get home?" "Oh," said 
he, "I don't know. I put myself into Mr. Fields's 
hands." "Well, Mr. Fields, how early can you get him 
home?" "About twelve," was the answer. "Now 
that 's pretty well," said the Doctor. "Amelia, go in 
and shut the door. Mr. Fields will take care of me." 
So between fun and anxiety they chatted away until 
they were fairly into the street and in the car. "I 'vc 
been doing too much lately between my lectures and my 
story, and the fine dinners I have been to, and I ought 
not to go out tonight. Why, it 's one of the greatest 
compliments one man ever paid another, my going out 
to I^ongfellow's tonight. By the way, Mr. Fields, do you 
appreciate the position you hold in our time? There 
never was anything like it. Why, I was nothing but a 
roaring kangaroo when you took me in hand, and I 
thought it was the right thing to stand up on my hind 
legs, but you combed me down and put me in proper 
shape. Now I want you to promise me one thing. We 're 
all growing old, I 'm near sixty myself; by and by the 




FIELDS, THE MAN OF BOOKS AND FRIENDSHIPS 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 35 

brain will begin to soften. Now you must tell me when 
the egg begins to look addled. People don't know of 
themselves." 

He had been to two large dinners lately, one at G. W. 
Wales's, which he said was the finest dinner he had ever 
seen, the most perfect in all its appointments, decorated 
with the largest profusion of flowers, in as perfect taste 
as he had ever seen. "Why, even the chair you sat in 
was so delicately padded as to give pleasure to that 
v/eak spot in the back which we all inherit from the fall 
of Adam." The other was at Mrs. Charles Dorr's, where 
there v/ere sixteen at table and the room "for heat was 
like the black hole at Calcutta," but the company was 
very brilliant. Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop, Mrs. Parkman, 

Dr. Hayes, etc. He sat next Mrs. ; says she is a 

thorough-bred woman of society, the daughter of a 
politician, the wife, first of a millionaire and now of a 
man of society. "I like such a woman now and then; 

she never makes a mistake." Mrs. was thoroughly 

canvassed at the table, "picked clean as any duck for 
the spit and then roasted over a slow fire," as O. W. H. 
afterward remarked to Mrs. Parkman, who is a very 
just woman and who weighed her well in the balances. 
When they arrived at L.'s, my basket of flowers stood 
surrounded by other gifts, and Longfellow himself sat 
crowned with all the natural loveliness of his rare nature. 
The day must have been a happy one for him. . . . 
O. W. H. had three perfect verses of a little poem in 
his hand which he read, and then Lowell talked, and 
they had great merriment and delight together. 



36 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

The two following passages from the diary for 1868 
seem to indicate that Dr. Holmes made a double use of 
his poem, "Bill and Joe," written in this year, included 
in his " Poems of the Class of '29," and according to the 
entry of July 17, read at the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa 
dinner of 1868 : — 

'January 16, 1868. — We had just finished dinner 
when Professor Holmes came in with his poem, one of 
the annual he contributes to the class-supper of the 
"Boys of '29." He read it through to us with feeling, 
his voice growing tremulous and husky at times. It was 
pleasant to see how he enjoyed our pleasure in it. The 
talk turned naturally after a little upon the question of 
Chief Justice, when he took occasion to run over in his 
mind the character and qualifications of some of our 
chief barristers. "As for Bigelow ^ (who has just gone 
out of office and it is his successor over whom they are 
struggling), as for Bigelow, it is astonishing to see how 
every bit of that man's talent has been brought into use; 
all he has is made the most of. Why, he 's like some 
cooks, give 'cm a horse and they will use every part of 
him except the shoes." 

Friday^ July 17, 1868. — Last evening Dr. Holmes 
came in fresh from the Phi Beta dinner at Cambridge.- 

' George Tyler Bigelow, of the \ larvarj Cl.iss of 1 829. 

* Harvard festivals were frequently noted. After the great day on which 
Lowell gave his Comnifmoration Ode, Mrs. Fields wrote (July 22, 1 865) : 
"What an evcr-mcmoraMe day, the one at Harvard ! The prayer of Phillips 
Brooks, the ode of lx)wcll, the address of Dr. Putnam and the Governor, and 
the heartfelt verses of Holmes, and the lovely music and the hymns. But 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 37 

He said, "I can't stop and I only came to read you my 
verses I read at the dinner, they made such a queer im- 
pression. I did n't mean to go, but James Lowell was to 
preside and sent me word that I really must be there, so 
I just wrote these off, and here they are — I don't know 
that I should have brought them in to read to you, but 
Hoar declares they are the best I have ever done." At 
length, in the exquisite orange of sunset, he read those 
delightful verses, full, full of feeling, "Bill and Joe." 
We did not wonder the Phi Beta boys liked them. I 
shall be surprised if every boy, especially those who find 
the almond blossoms in the hair, as W. says, does not 
like them, and if they do noi win for him a more uni- 
versal reputation than he has yet won. . . . 

I was impressed last night with the nervous energy of 
O. W. H. His leg by a slight quiver kept time to the 
reading of his verses, and his talk fell before and after 
like swift rain. He does not go away from town but 
sways between Boston and Cambridge all these perfect 
summer days ; receiving yesterday, the hottest day of 
this or many years. Motley at dinner, and going per- 
petually, and writing verses and letters not a few. His 
activity is wonderful ; think of writing letters these 
warm delicious evenings by gaslight in a small front 
study on the street ! It hurts him less than his wife, 
partly because the intellectual vivacity and excitement 

Lowell's Ode ! ! How it overtops the whole of what is preserved on paper 
beside! Charles G. Loring presided. 'Awkwardly enough done,' said 
O. W. H.; 'It is a delicate thing to introduce a poet, he should be delivered 
to the table as a falconer delivers the falcon into the air, but Mr. Loring 
puts you down hard on the table — ca-chunk. ' " 



38 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

keeps him up, partly because he is physically fitted to 
bear almost everything but cold. How fortunate for the 
world that while he lives he should continue his work so 
faithfully. He will have no successor, at least for many 
a long year, after we have all gone to sleep under our 
green counterpanes and Nature has tucked us up v.ell 
in yearly violets. 

Earlier in the year Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Stowe met 
in Charles Street. 

Wednesday mornings January 29, 1868. — Last night 
Professor Holmes, Mrs. Stowe, her daughter Georgie, 
and the Howellses, took tea here. The Professor came 
early and was in good talking trim — presently in came 
Mrs. Stowe, and they fell shortly into talk upon Home- 
opathy and Allopathy. He grew very warm, declared 
that cases cited of cures proved nothing, and we were all 
"incompetent" to judge ! We coukl iK^t but be amused 
at his heat, for we were more or less believers in Home- 
opathy against his one argument for Allopathy. In vain 
Mrs. Stowe and I tried to turn and stem the fiery tide : 
Georgie or Mrs. Howells would be sure to sweep us back 
into it again. However, there were many brilliant things 
said, and sweet and good and interesting things too. 
The Professor told us one curious fact, that chemists had 
in vain analyzed the poison of rattlesnakes and could 
not discover the elements of destruction it undoubtedly 
possesses. Also that, when Indians poison their arrows 
with it, they hang up the liver of a white wolf ami make 



DR. HOLIN^ES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 39 

one snake after another bite it until the liver is entirely 
impregnated; they then leave it to dry until disinte- 
grated, when they moisten and apply round the necks of 
the arrows — not on the point. He had a long quiet 
chat with Mrs. Stowe before the evening ended. They 
compared their early Calvinistic education and the 
effect produced upon their characters by such training. 
Tuesday J April 13, 1869. — Dr. Holmes and his wife 
and Mr. Whittier dined here. The talk was free, totally 
free from all feeling of constraint, as it could not have 
been had another person been present. Whittier says he 
is afraid of strangers, and Dr. Holmes is never more de- 
lightful than under just such auspices. Dr. Holmes 
asked Whittier's undisguised opinion of Longfellow's 
"New England Tragedies" — "honest opinion now," 
said he. "Well, I liked them," said Whittier, half 
reluctantly — evidently he had found much that was 
beautiful and in keeping with the spirit of the times of 
which Longfellow wrote, and their passionless character 
did not trouble him as it had O. W. H. Presently, he 
added that he was surprised to find how he had pre- 
served almost literally the old text of the old books he 
had lent Longfellow twelve years ago, and had meas- 
ured it off into verse. "Ah," said O. W. H., "you 
have said the severest thing after all — 'measured off ' ; 
that 's just what he has done. It is one of the easiest, 
the very commonest tricks of the rhymster to be able to 
do this. I am surprised to see the ease with which I 
can do it myself." They spoke then of "Evangeline," 
which both agreed in awarding unqualified praise. 



40 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

"Only," said Whitticr, "I always wondered there was 
no terrible outburst of indignation over the outrage 
done to that poor colony. The tide of the story runs 
as smoothly as if nothing had occurred. I long thought 
of working up that story myself, but I am glad I did 
not, only I can't understand its being so calm." They 
talked on religious questions of course, the Professor 
holding that sin being finite, and of such a nature that 
we could both outgrow it and root it up, Whittier 
still returning to the ground that sin was a "very real 
thing." 

It is impossible to represent the clearness and swift- 
ness of Dr. Holmes's talk. The purity of heart and 
strength of endeavor evident in the two poets makes 
their atmosphere a very elevating one and they evi- 
dently naturally rejoiced in each other's society. 

Mrs. Holmes had not been out to dine before this 
winter. Jamie sent us a pot of strawberries growing, 
which delighted everybody. 

Before the following passage was written, in 1S71, Dr. 
Holmes had moved from Charles Street to Beacon 
Street ; Mr. Fields, in impaired health, had retired from 
active business as a publisher and was devoting himself 
chiefly to writing and lecturing; and Mrs. Fields, al- 
ready interested in the establishment of Coffee Houses 
for the p)oor in the North End and elsewhere, had begun 
the notable work in public charities to which her ener- 
gies were so largely given for the remaining forty-four 
years of her life. In the Cooperative Workrooms, still 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 41 

rendering their beneficent services, and in the larger 
organization of the Associated Charities, embodying a 
principle now widely adopted throughout the land, the 
labors of this generous spirit, never content to give all 
it had to the gracious life within its own four walls, have 
borne enduring fruits. 

1 87 1. — Thursday afternoon last (June 22) went to 
Cambridge for a few visits, and coming home stopped 
at Dr. Holmes's, at his new house on Beacon St. Found 
them both at home, sitting lonely in the oriel window 
looking out upon a glorious sunset. They were think- 
ing of the children who have flown out of their nest. 
Dr. Holmes was very friendly and sweet. He talked 
most affectionately with J., told him he no longer felt 
a spur to write since he had gone out of business ; he 
needed just the little touch of praise and encouragement 
he used to administer to make him do it ; now he did not 
think he should ever write any more worth mentioning. 
He had been in to see the Coffee House and entertained 
us much by saying he met President Eliot near the door 
one day just as he was going in, but he was ashamed of 
doing so until they had parted company. There was 
something so childlike in this confession that we all 
laughed heartily over it. However he got in at last, and 
"tears as big as onions stood in my eyes when I saw 
what had been accomplished." "You must be a very 
happy woman," he went on to say. I told him of the 
new one in Eliot Street about to be opened this coming 
week. 



42 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

At the end of the summer of 187 1, when Mr. and Mrs. 
iMclds were beginning to learn the charms of the North 
Shore town of Manchester, where they established the 
"Gambrel Cottage" on "Thunderbolt Hill" which 
gave a summer synonym to the hospitality of Charles 
Street, they journeyed one day to Nahant for a mid- 
day dinner with Longfellow. Here Mrs. Fields's sister, 
Louisa, Mrs. James H. Beal, was a neighbor of the poet. 
Another neighbor was the late George Abbot James, 
and in Longfellow's diary for September 4, 1871, is the 
entry: "Call on Dr. Holmes at Mr. James's. Sumner 
still there. We discuss the new poets." Mrs. Fields 
reports a continuation of the talk with the same friends. 

ITeduesdayy September 6, 1871. — Dined with Mr. 
Longfellow at Nahant. The day was warm with a soft 
south wind blowing, and as we crossed the beach white 
waves were curling up the sands. . . . The dear poet 
saw us coming from afar and walked to his little gate to 
meet us with such a sweet cordial welcome that it was 
worth going many a mile to have that alone. The three 
little ladies, his daughters, and Ernest's wife, were 
within, but they came warmly forward to give us greet- 
ing; also Mr. Sam. Longfellow was of the party. A few 
moments' chat in the little parlor, when Longfellow saw 
Holmes coming in the distance (he had an opera-glass, 
being short-sighted, and was sitting on the piazza with 
J.). "Hullo!" said he, "here comes Holmes, and all 
dressed up too, with flowers in his button-hole." Sure 
enough, here was the Professor to have dinner with us 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 43 

also. He was full of talk as ever and looking remark- 
ably well. Longfellow asked with much interest about 
Balaustion and Joaquin Miller, neither of which he had 
read. Holmes criticized as if unbearable and beyond the 
pale of decency Browning's cutting of words, "Flower o* 
the pine," and such characteristic passages. Longfellow 
spoke of a volume of poems he had received of late from 
England in which "saw" was made to rhyme with 
"more." Holmes said Keats often did that. "Not ex- 
actly, I think," said L., "'dawn' and 'forlorn,' per- 
haps." "Well," said H., "when I was in college" (I 
think he said college, certainly while at Cambridge) 
"and my first volume was about to appear, Mrs. Fol- 
som saw the sheets and fortunately at the very last 
moment for correction discovered I had made 'for- 
lorn' rhyme with 'gone,' and out of her own head and 
without having time to consult with me she substituted 
'sad and wan.'" ^ The Professor went on to say that he 
must confess to a tender feeling of regret for his "so 
forlorn" to this very day, but he supposed every writer 
of poems must have his keen regrets for the numerous 
verses he could recall where he had wrestled with the 
English language and had lost something of his thought 
in his struggle with the necessities of art. We shortly 
after went to dinner, where the talk still continued to 
turn on art and artists, chiefly musical, the divorcement 
of music and thought ; a thinker or man of intellect 
in listening to music comes to a comprehension of it, 

' This anecdote of the revision of The Last Leaf, written in 1 831, is told 
a little differently in the annotations of Holmes's Complete Works. 



44 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Holmes said, mediately, but a musician feels it directly 
through some gift of which the thinker knows nothing. 
Longfellow always recalls with intense delight hearing 
Gounod sing his own music in Rome — his voice was 
hardly to be mentioned among the fine voices of the 
world, indeed it was small, but his rendering was exquis- 
ite. Canvassing T. B. Read's poems and speaking of 
"Sheridan's Ride," which has been so highly praised, 
"Yes," said Holmes, "but there are very poor lines in 
it, but how often, to use Scripture phrase, there is a fly 
in the ointment." The talk went bowling off to Pere 
Hyacinthe. "He was very pleasant," said Holmes, "it 
was most agreeable to meet him, but you could only 
go a short distance. His desire was to be a good Catho- 
lic, and ours is of course quite different. It was like 
speaking through a knot-hole after all." 

The dumb waiter bounced up. "We cannot call that 
a dumb waiter," said L., "but I had an odd dream the 
other night. I thought Greene (G.W.) came bouncing up 
on the waiter in that manner and stepped off in a most 
dignified fashion with a crushed white hat on his head. 
He said he had just been to drive with a Spanish lady !" 

Sumner (Charles) came up to the piazza. He had 
dined elsewhere and came over as soon as possible for a 
little talk. Holmes talked on, although we all said, 
"Mr. Sumner — here is Mr. Sumner," without per- 
ceiving that the noble Senator was sitting just outside 
the cottage window waiting for us to rise, and began to 
converse about him. Longfellow grew nervous and rose 
to speak with Sumner — still Holmes did not perceive, 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 45 

and went on until Jamie relieved us from a tendency 
to convulsions by voting that we should join the Sen- 
ator. Then Sumner related the substance of an amusing 
letter of Cicero's he had just been reading in which 
Cicero gives an account to his friend of a visit he had 
just received from the Emperor Julius Caesar. He had 
invited Julius to pass a few days with him, but he came 
quite unexpectedly with a thousand men ! Cicero, see- 
ing them from afar, debated with another friend what 
he should do with them, but at length managed to en- 
camp them. To feed them was a less easy matter. The 
emperor took everything quite easily, however, and 
was very pleasant, "but," adds Cicero, "he is not the 
man to whom I should say a second time, 'if you are 
passing this way, give me a call.'" 

Again, in 1873, Longfellow, Holmes, and Sumner are 
found together at the dinner-table with Mrs. Fidds, 
this time in Charles Street. When she made use of her 
diary at this point, for her article on Dr. Holmes which 
appeared first in the "Century Magazine" (1895), it 
was with many omissions. The passage is now given 
almost entire. It should be said that the Misses Towne, 
mentioned at the beginning of it, were friends and sum- 
mer neighbors at Manchester. 

Saturday J October 11, 1873. — Helen and Alice Towne 
have come to pass Sunday with us. Charles Sumner, 
Longfellow, Greene, Dr. Holmes came to dine. Mr. 
Sumner seemed less strong than of late and I fancied he 



46 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

suffered somewhat while at table during the evening, 
but he told me he was working at his desk or reading 
during fourteen consecutive hours not infrequently at 
present, as he was in the habit of doing when uninter- 
rupted by friendly \'isits. He said he was very fond of 
the passive exercise of reading; the active exercise of 
composition was of course agreeable in certain moods, 
but reading was a never-ending delight. He spoke of 
Lord Brougham, and Mrs. Norton and her two beauti- 
ful sisters. Both he and Mr. Longfellow recalled them 
in their youthful loveliness, but Mr. Sumner said when 
he was in England the last time he saw the Duchess of 
Somerset, who was a most ix>etic looking creature in her 
youth and (I believe) the youngest of the three sisters, 
so changed he should never have guessed who it might 
be. She was grown a huge red-faced woman. (Long- 
fellow laughed, referring to her second marriage and 
said, "Yes, she had turned a Somerset!") Dr. Holmes 
sparkled and coruscated as I have seldom heard him 
before. We are more than ever convinced that no one 
since Sydney Smith was ever so brilliant, so witty, 
spontaneous, naif, and unfailing as Dr. Holmes. He 
talked much about his class in College: "There never 
was such x-igor in any class before, it seems to me — 
almost ever}' member turns out sooner or later distin- 
guished for something. We have had every grade of 
moral status from a criminal to a Chief Justice, and we 
never let any one of them drop. We keep hold of their 
hands year after year and lift up the weak and failing 
ones till they are at last redeemed. .\h, there was one 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 47 

exception — years ago we voted to cast a man out who 
had been a defaulter or who had committed some of- 
fense of that nature. The poor fellow sank down, and 
before the next year, when we repented of this decision, 
he had gone too far down and presently died. But we 
have kept all the rest. Every fourth man in our class is 
a poet. Sam. Smith belongs to our class, who wrote ' My 
Country, 't is of Thee.' Sam. Smith will live when Long- 
fellow, Whittier, and all the rest of us have gone into 
oblivion — and yet what is there in those verses to 
make them live ? Do you remember the line 'Like that 
above'.'' I asked Sam. what 'that' referred to — he 
said 'that rapture'!! — (The expression of the rapid 
talker's face of contempt as he said this was one of the 
most amusing possible.) — Even the odds and ends of 
our class have turned out something. . . . Longfellow, 
I wish I could make you talk about yourself." — " But I 
never do," said L. quietly. " I know you never do, but 
you confessed to me once." — "No, I don't think I ever 
did," said L. laughing. 

Greene was for the most part utterly speechless. He 
attended with great assiduity to his dinner, which was a 
good one, and Longfellow was watchful and kind enough 
to send him little choice things to eat which he thought 
he would enjoy. 

Holmes was abstemious and never ceased talking — 
"Most men write too much. I would rather risk my 
future fame upon one lyric than upon ten volumes. But 
I have said Boston is the hub of the universe. I will rest 
upon that." 



48 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

All this report is singularly dry compared with the wit 
and humor which radiated about the table. We laughed 
till the tears ran down our cheeks. Longfellow was in- 
tensely amused. I have not seen him laugh so much for 
many a long day. We ladies sat at the table long after 
coffee and cigars in order to hear the talk. . . . 

Sumner said he had been much displeased by a re- 
mark Professor Henry Hunt made to him a few days 
ago. He said Mr. Agassiz was an itnpediment in the path 
of science. What did such men as Hunt and John Fiske 
mean by underrating a man who has given such books 
to the world as Agassiz has done, not to speak of his 
untiring efforts in the other avenues of influence! "It 
means just this," said Holmes: ".Agassiz will not listen 
to the Darwinian theory ; his whole efl^ort is on the other 
side. Now Agassiz is no longer young, and I was reading 
the other day in a book on the Sandwich Islands of 
an old Fcjce man who had been carried away among 
strangers, but who prayed he might be carried home, 
that his brains might be beaten out in peace by his son 
acairding to the custom of those lands. It flashed over 
mc then that our sons beat out our brains in the same 
way. They do not walk in our ruts of thoughts or begin 
exactly where we leave ofl^, but they have a new stand- 
point of their own. \x. present the Darwinian theory 
can be nothing but an hypothesis; the important links 
of proof are missing and cannot be supplied ; but in the 
myriad ages there may be new developments." 

I thought the young ladies looked a little tired sit- 
ting, so about nine o'clock we left the table — still the 




LOUIS AGASSIZ 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 49 

talk went on for about four hours when they broke up. 

With two letters from Dr. Hohnes this mmbling chron- 
icle of his friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Fields must end. 
The first of the communications is a mere fragment of 
his everyday humor : 

Beverly- Farms-by-the-Depot 

July \Wi, 1878 
Dear Mr. Fields : — 

The Corner sends me a book directed to me here, 
but on opening the outside wrapper I read "James T. 
Fields, Esq., Jamaica Plain, Boston, Mass." The book, 
which is sealed up (or stuck up, like many authors), 
measures 7x5, nearly, and is presumably idiotic, like 
most books which are sent us without being ordered. 
Perhaps you have received a similar package which 
on opening you found directed to O. W. Holmes, Esq., 
Peak of TenerifFe, Boston. If so, when the weather 
grows cool again and we can make up our minds to face 
the title page of the dreaded volume, we will make an 
exchange. 

Always truly yours, 

O. W. Holmes 

The second letter, written ten years after Dr. Holmes, 
in moving from Charles to Beacon Street, had made the 
last of his "justifiable domicides," strikes a more serious 
note, revealing that quality of true sympathy so closely 
joined in abundant natures with true humor. Mr. 
Fields had died in April of 1881, and Mrs. Fields had 



so MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

applied herself at once to the preparation of her volume, 
"James T. Fields: Biographical Notes and Personal 
Sketches," drawing freely upon the diaries from which 
many of the foregoing pages, then passed over, are now 
taken. The performance of this loving labor must have 
done much towards the first filling of a life so grievously 
emptied. Already the intimate and beloved com- 
panionship of Miss Jewett had come into it. 

294 Beacon St., November 16, 1881 

My dear Mrs. Fields: — 

I feel sure there will be but one voice with regard to 
your beautiful memorial volume. If I had any mis- 
givings that you might find the delicate task too diffi- 
cult — that you might be discouraged between the 
wish to draw a life-like picture and the fear of saying 
more than the public had a right to, these misgivings 
have all vanished, and I am sure your finished task 
leaves nothing to be regretted. .As he was in life, 
he is in your loving but not overwrought story. I do 
not see how a life so full of wholesome activity and 
genuine human feeling could have been better pictured 
than it is in your pages. Long before I had finished 
reading your memoir in the proofs I had learned to 
trust you entirely as to the whole management of the 
work on which you had entered. .AH I feared was 
that your feelings might be overtasked, and that the 
dread of coming before the public when your whole 
heart was in the pages opened to its calm judgment 
might be more than you could bear. 



DR. HOLMES, FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR 51 

And now, my dear Mrs. Fields, there must come a 
period of depression, almost of collapse, after the labor 
and the solace of this tender, tearful, yet blessed occu- 
pation. I think you need the kind thoughts and sooth- 
ing words — if words have any virtue in them — of 
those who love you more than while each day had its 
busy hours in which the memory of so much that was 
delightful to recall kept the ever-returning pangs of 
grief a Uttle while in abeyance. It must be so. But 
before long, quietly, almost imperceptibly, there will, I 
hope and trust, return to you the quieting sense of all 
that you have done and all that you have been for that 
life which for so many happy years you were privileged 
to share. How few women have so perfectly fulfilled, not 
only every duty, but every ideal that a husband could 
think of as going to make a happy home ! This must 
be and will be an ever-growing source of consolation. 

Forgive me for saying what many others must have 
said to you, but none more sincerely than myself. 

I do not know how to express to you the feeling 
with which Mrs. Holmes looks upon you in your be- 
reavement. I should do it injustice if I attempted to 
give it expression, for she lives so largely in her sym- 
pathies and her endeavors to help others that she could 
not but sorrow deeply with you in your affliction and 
wish there were any word of corusolation she could add 
to the love she sends you. 

Believe me, dear Mrs. Fields, 

Affectionately yours, 

O. W. Holmes 



52 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

For thirteen years longer, till his death in 1894 ^^ the 
age of eighty-five, Dr. Holmes was a prolific writer of 
notes, more often than letters, to Mrs. Fields. The sym- 
pathy of tried and ripened friendship runs through them 
all. In the Charles Street house the younger friends 
might see from time to time this oldest friend of their 
hostess. When he came no more, it was well for those of 
a later day that his memory was so securely held in the 
retrospect and the record of Mrs. Fields. 



IV 

CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE VISITORS 

The volumes in which Mrs. Fields brought to light 
many passages from her journals stand as red and black 
buoys marking the channel through which the navigator 
of these pages must steer his course if he is to avoid the 
rocks and shoals of the previously published. In her 
books it was but natural that she should deal most freely 
with those august figures in American letters who so 
towered above their contemporaries as to attach the 
longer and more portentous adjective "Augustan" to 
the circle formed by the joining of their hands. If it has 
become the fashion to look back upon the American 
Augustans and the English Victorians with similarly 
mingled feelings, in which tolerance stands in a growing 
proportion to the admiration and respect which form- 
erly ruled supreme, it is the unaltered fact that the fig- 
ures of the American group dominated both the local 
and the national scene of letters in their day, and that 
their historic significance is undiminished. But it is 
rather as human beings than as literary figures that 
they reveal themselves in the sympathetic records of 
Mrs. Fields — human beings who typified and embod- 
ied a state of thought and society so remote in its char- 
acteristic qualities from the prevailing conditions of this 
later day as to be approaching steadily that "equal date 



54 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

with Andes and with Ararat" of which one of them 
wrote in words quite unmistakably his own. 

Perhaps no single member of the group is represented 
in Mrs. Fields's journals so often as Dr. Holmes by 
illuminating pages which she herself left unprinted. For 
this reason, and because Concord and Cambridge visi- 
tors to Charles Street were in fact so much a "group," 
it has seemed wise to assemble in this place passages 
that relate to one after another of the "Augustan" 
friends in turn. Sometimes they appear as separate 
subjects of record, sometimes in company with their 
fellows. That majestic figure, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
whose death in 1864 made the earliest gap in the circle 
of figures most memorable, shall be first to step forth, 
like one of his own personages of the Province House, 
from the shadows in which imlccd he lived. 



The long chapter on Hawthorne in "Yesterdays with 
Authors," and that small volume n.bout him which Mrs, 
Fields contributed in 1899 to the" Beacon Biographies," 
constitute the more finished portraits of the man as his 
host and hostess in Charles Street saw him. His letters 
to Fields are quoted at length in "Yesterdays with 
Authors," and contribute an autobiographic element of 
much importance to any study of Hawthorne. But 
there are illuminating passages that were left unpub- 
lished. In one of them, for example, Hawthorne, in a 
letter of September 21, i860, after lamenting thestateof 
his daughter's health, exclaimed : " I am continually re- 




HAWTHORNE IX 1857 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE SS 

minded, nowadays, of a response which I once heard 
a drunken sailor make to a pious gentleman who asked 

him how he felt: 'Pretty d d miserable, thank 

God !' It very well expresses my thorough discomfort 
and forced acquiescence." In another, of July 14, 

1 86 1, after the calamity that befell Longfellow in the 
tragic death of his wife through burning, Hawthorne 
wrote to Fields : — 

"How does Longfellow bear this terrible misfor- 
tune ? How are his own injuries ? Do write and tell 
me all about him. I cannot at all reconcile this calamity 
to my sense of fitness. One would think that there 
ought to have been no deep sorrow in the life of a man 
like him; and now comes this blackest of shadows, 
which no sunshine hereafter can ever penetrate! I 
shall be afraid ever to meet him again ; he cannot again 
be the man that I have known." 

In the words, "I shall be afraid ever to meet him 
again," the very accent of Hawthorne is clearly heard. 
Still another manuscript letter, preserved in the Charles 
Street cabinet, should now be printed to round out the 
story of Hawthorne's reluctant omission from his 
"Atlantic" article — "Chiefly about War Matters" — 
that personal description of Abraham Lincoln which 
Fields was unwilling to publish in his magazine in 

1862, but afterwards included in his "Yesterdays with 
Authors." ^ In that place, however, he used but a few 
words from the following letter. 

1 See Yesterdays with Authors, p. 98, and The Atlantic Monthly and Its 
Makers, p. 46. 



56 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Concord, May 23, '62 

Dear Fields : — 

I have looked over the article under the influence of 
a cigar and through the medium (but don't whisper it) 
of a glass of arrack and water ; and though I think you 
are wrong, I am going to comply with your request. I 
am the most good-natured man, and the most amenable 
to good advice (or bad advice either, for that matter) 
that you ever knew — so have it your own way. The 
whole description of the interview with Uncle Abe and 
his personal appearance must be omitted, since I do 
not find it possible to alter them, and in so doing, I 
really think you omit the only part of the article really 
worth publishing. Upon my honor, it seemed to me to 
have a historical value — but let it go. I have altered 
and transferred one of the notes so as to indicate to the 
unfortunate public that it here loses something very 
nice. You must mark the omission with dashes, so — 

X X X X X X X. 

I have likewise modified the other passage you al- 
lude to; and I cannot now conceive of any objection 
to it. 

What a terrible thing it is to try to get off a little bit 
of truth into this miserable humbug of a world! If I 
had sent you the article as I first conceived it, I should 
not so much have wondered. 

I want you to send me a proof sheet of the article in 
its present state before making any alterations; for if 
ever I collect these sketches into a volume, I shall insert 
it in all its original beauty. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 57 

With the best regards to Mrs. Fields, 
Truly yours, 

Nath^ Hawthorne 
P. S. I shall probably come to Boston next week, to 
the Saturday Club. 

If these unpublished letters add something to the 
more formal portraits of Hawthorne drawn by Fields 
and his wife, still other lines may be added by means of 
the unconscious, fragmentary sketches on which the 
portraits were based. In Mrs. Fields's diaries the fol- 
lowing glimpses of Hawthorne in the final months of 
his life are found. 

December 4, 1863. — Hawthorne and Mr. and Mrs. 
Alden passed the night with us; he came to town to 
attend the funeral of Mrs. Franklin Pierce. He seemed 
ill and more nervous than usual. He brought the first 
part of a story which he says he shall never finish.^ 
J. T. F. says it is very fine, yet sad. Hav/thorne says in 
it, "pleasure is only pain greatly exaggerated," which 
is queer to say the least, if not untrue. I think it must 
be diflferently stated from this. He was as courteous 
and as grand as ever, and as true. He does not lose 
that all-saddening smile, either. 

Sunday, December 6, 1863. — Mr. Hawthorne re- 
turned to us. He had found General Pierce overwhelmed 
with sadness at the death of his wife and greatly needing 
his companionship, therefore he accompanied him the 

1 The Dolliver Romance. 



58 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

whole distance to Concord, N. H. He said he could not 
generally look at such things, but he was obliged to look 
at the body of Mrs. Pierce. It was like a carven image 
laid in its richly embossed enclosure and there was a 
remote expression about it as if it had nothing to do 
with things present. Harriet Prescott was there. He had 
some talk with her and liked her. He was more deeply 
impressed than ever with the exquisite courtesy of his 
friend. Even at the grave, while overwhelmed with 
grief, Pierce drew up the collar of Hawthorne's coat to 
keep him from the cold.* 

We went to walk in the morning antl left Mr. Haw- 
thorne to read in the library. He found a book called 
"Dealings with the Dead," which he liked — indeed he 
said he likeil no house to stay in better than this. He 
thought the old edition of Boccaccio which belonged to 
lx:igh Hunt a poor translation. He has already written 
the first chapter of a new romance, but he thought so 
little of the work himself as to make it impossible for 
him to continue until Mr. Fields had read it and ex- 
pressed his sincere admiration for the work. This has 
given him better heart to go on with it. He talked of the 
magazine with Mr. V.; t(jld him he thought it was the 
most ably edited magazine in the world, and was bound 
to be a success, with this exception : he said, "I fear its 
politics — beware 1 What will you do when in a year or 
two the politics of the country change ?" "I will cjuietly 
wait tor that time to come," saiti J. T. 1"\ ; "then I can 
tell you." 

'Fields lircw upon this paragraph for one in Yesterdays with Julhors, p. 112. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 59 

As the sunset deepened Mr. Hawthorne talked of his 
early life. His grandfather bought a township in Maine 
and at the early age of eleven years he accompanied his 
mother and sister down there to live upon the land. 
From that moment the happiest period of his life began 
and lasted until he was thirteen, when he was sent to 
school in Salem. While in Maine he lived like a bird of 
the air, so perfect was the freedom he enjoyed. During 
the moonlight nights of winter he would skate until mid- 
night alone upon the icy face of Sebago Lake, with all 
its ineffable beauty stretched before him and the deep 
shadows of the hills on either hand. When he was weary 
he could take refuge sometimes in a log cabin (there 
were several in this region), where half a tree would be 
burning on the broad hearth and he could sit by that 
and see the stars up through the chimney. All the long 
summer days he roamed at will, gun in hand, through 
the woods, and there he learned a nearness to Nature 
and a love for free life which has never left him and made 
all other existence in a measure insupportable. His 
suffering began with that Salem school and his knowl- 
edge of his relatives who were all distasteful to him. He 
said, "How sad middle life looks to people of erratic 
temperaments. Everything is beautiful in youth — all 
things are allowed to it." We gave him "Pet Marjorie" 
to read in the evening — a little story by John 
Brown. He thought it so beautiful that he read it care- 
fully twice until every word was grasped by his powerful 
memory. . . . 

Talking of England, Hawthorne said she was not a 



6o mi:morii:s uv a ii()sri:ss 

powerful empire. The extent over which her dominions 
extended led her to fancy herself powerful. She is much 
like a squash vine which rins over a whole garden, but 
once cut at the root and it is gone at once. 

We talked and laughed about Boswell, whom he 
thinks one of the most remarkable men who ever lived, 
and J. T. F. recalled that story of Johnson who, upon 
being told of a man who had committed some mis- 
demeanor and was upon the verge of committing sui- 
cide in consequence, said, "Why does not the man go 
somewhere where he is not known, instead of to the 
devil where he is known?" 

Hawthorne was in the same class at college with Long- 
fellow, whom he says he could not appreciate at that 
time. He was always finely dressed antl was a tremen- 
dous student. Hawthorne was careless in dress and no 
student, but always reading desultorily right and left. 
Now they are deeply appreciative of each othcr.^ 

Hawthorne says he wants the North to beat now; 
't is the only way to save the country from destruction. 
He has been strangely inert and remote upon the sub- 
ject of the war; partly from his deep hatred of every- 
thing sad. He seemed to feel as if he could not live and 
face it. 

He was intensely witty, but his wit is of so ethereal a 
texture that the fine essence has vanished and I can re- 
member nothing now of his witty things ! 

• Only a month after making this entry, Mrs. Fields wrote in her journal : 
"A note came from I^ingfcilow saying he hail received a sad note from Haw- 
thorne. 'I wish wc couKi have a little dinner for him,' he says, 'of two sad 
authors and two jolly publishers — nobody else.'" 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 6i 

It would be a pity to truncate the following passage 
by confining the record of Fields's day in Concord to his 
glimpse of Hawthorne, already recorded, with emenda- 
tions, in the " Biographical Notes.** 

Saturday J January 9, 1864. — J. T. F. passed yester- 
day in Concord. He went first to see Hawthorne, who 
was sitting alone gazing into the fire, his grey dressing- 

From a letter oj Hawthorne'' s after a visit to Charles Street 

gown, which became him like a Roman toga, wrapped 
around his figure. He said he had done nothing for 
three weeks. Yet we feel his romance must be maturing 
in his mind. General Barlow and Mrs. Howe had sent 
word they were coming to call, so Mrs. Hav/thorne had 
gone out to walk (been thrown out on picket-duty, Mrs. 
Stowe said) and had left word at home that Mr. Haw- 
thorne was ill and could see no one. After his visit 
there, full of afi^ectionate kindness, J. T. F. proceeded 
to dinner with the Emersons. Here too the reception 
was most hearty, but he fancied there were no servants 



62 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

to speak of at either house. Mrs. E. looked deadly pale, 
but her wit coruscated marvellously ; even Mr. Emer- 
son grew silent to listen. She said a committee of three, 
of which she was one, had been formed to pronounce 
upon certain essays (unpublished) of Mr. Emerson, 
which they thought should be printed now. She thought 
some of them finer than any of his published essays. He 
laughed a great deal at the fun she poked at the earlier 
efforts. 

From there J. T. F. proceeded to see the Thoreaus. 
The mother and sister live well, but lonely it should 
seem, there without Henry. They produced 32 volumes 
of journal and a few letters. The idea was to print the 
letters. We hope it may be done. Their house was like a 
conservatory, it was so filled with plants in beautiful 
condition. Henry liked to have the doors thrown open 
that he might look at these during his illness. He 
was an excellent son, and even when living in his retire- 
ment at Walden Pond, would come home every day. He 
supported himself too from a very early age. 

Here follows a passage also used by Fields in "Yester- 
days with Authors," but in a rendering so moderated 
that the original entry in the journal is quite another 
thing. 

Monday^ March 28. — Mr. Hawthorne came down to 
take this as his first station on his journey for health. 
He shocked us by his invalid appearance. He has 
become quite deaf, too. His limbs are shrunken but 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE Gt, 

his great eyes still burn with their lambent fire. He 
said, "Why does Nature treat us so like children! I 
think we could bear it if we knew our fate. At least I 
think it would not make much difference to me now 
what became of me." He talked with something of his 
old wit at times; said, "Why has the good old custom 
of coming together to get drunk gone out ? Think of the 
delight of drinking in pleasant company and then lying 
down to sleep a deep strong sleep." Poor man ! He 
sleeps very little. We heard him walking in his room 
during a long portion of the night, heavily moving, 
moving as if indeed waiting, watching for his fate. 
At breakfast he gave us a most singular account of an 
interview with Mr. Alcott. He said: "Alcott was one 
of the most excellent of men. He could never quarrel 
with anyone." But the other day he came to make 
Mr. H. a call, to ask him if there was any difficulty or 
misunderstanding between the two families. Mr. Haw- 
thorne said no, that would be impossible; "but I pro- 
ceeded," he continued, "to tell him it was not possible 
to live upon amicable terms with Mrs. Alcott. . . . 
The old man acknowledged the truth of all that I said 
(indeed who should know it better), but I comforted 
him by saying in time of illness or necessity I did not 
doubt we should be the best of helpers to each other. I 
clothed all this in velvet phrases, that it might not seem 
too hard for him to bear, but he took it all like a saint." 
April, 1864. — When Mr. Hawthorne returned after 
watching at the death-bed of Mr. Ticknor, his mind was 
in a healthier condition, we thought, than when he 



64 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

left, but the experience had been a terrible one. I can 
never forget the look of pallid exhaustion he wore the 
night he returned to us. He said he had scarcely eaten 
or slept since he left. " Mr. Childs watched me so closely 
after poor Ticknor died, as if I had lost my protector 
and friend, and so I had ! But he stuck by as if he were 
afraid to leave me alone. He stayed past the dinner 
hour, and when I began to wonder if he never ate him- 
self, he departed and sent another man to watch me till 
he should return!" Nevertheless he liked Mr. Childs 
and spoke repeatedly of his unwearying kindness. "I 
never saw anything like it," he said; yet when he was 
abstractedly wondering where his slippers were, I over- 
heard him say to himself, "Oh ! I remember, that cursed 
Childs watched me so I forgot everything." 

He spoke of the coKlness of somebody and said, 
"Well, I think he would have felt something if he had 
been there !" He said he did not think death would be 
so terrible if it were not for the undertakers. It was 
dreadful to think of being handled by those men. 

He was often wholly overcome by the ludicrous view 
of something presented to him in the midst of his grief. 
There was a black servant sleeping in the room that 
last night, whose name was Peter. Once he snored 
loudly, when the dying man raised himself with an ap- 
preciation of fun still living in him and said, "Well 
done, Peter!" 

In every account of the last week of Hawthorne's 
life, the shock he received through the illness and death 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 6s 

of his friend and traveling companion, Ticknor, in 
Philadelphia, is an item of sombre moment. The two 
men had left Boston together late in March — Haw- 
thorne, sick and broken, writing but once, in a tremulous 
hand, to his wife during the ill-starred journey; Ticknor, 
giving himself unstintingly to the restoration of Haw- 
thorne's health, and stricken unto death before a fort- 
night was gone. The circumstances are suggested in the 
entry that has just been quoted from Mrs. Fields's 
journal. They stand still more clearly revealed in the 
last letter written by Hawthorne to Fields, who refers 
to it in "Yesterdays with Authors," and adds that the 
news of Ticknor's death reached Boston on the very 
day after this letter was written, all too evidently with 
a feeble hold upon the pen. 

Philadelphia, Continental Hotel 

Saturday mornifjg 

Dear Fields : — 

I am sorry to say that our friend Ticknor is suffering 
under a severe billious attack since yesterday morning. 
He had previously seemed uncomfortable, but not to an 
alarming degree. He sent for a physician during the 
night, and fell into the hands of an allopathist, who, of 
course, belabored with pills and powders of various 
kinds, and then proceeded to cup, and poultice, and blis- 
ter, according to the ancient rule of that tribe of sav- 
ages. The consequence is that poor Ticknor is already 
very much reduced, while the disorder flourishes as lux- 
uriantly as if that were the doctor's sole object. He calls 



(yd MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

it a billions colic (or bilious, I know not which) and says 
it is one of the severest cases he ever knew. 1 think him 
a man of skill and intelligence, in his way, and doubt 
not that he will do everything that his views of scientific 
medicine will permit. 

Since I began writing the above, Mr. Bennett of Bos- 
ton tells me the Doctor, after this morning's visit, re- 
quested the proprietor of the Continental to telegraph 
to Boston the state of the case. I am glad of it, because 
it relieves me of the responsibility of either disclosing 
bad intelligence or withholding it. I will only add that 
Ticknor, under the influence of a blister and some pow- 
ders, seems more comfortable than at any time since his 
attack, and that Mr. Bennett (who is an apothecary, and 
therefore conversant with these accursed matters) says 
that he is in a gofxi state. But I can see that it will be 
not a very few days that will set him upon his legs again. 
As regards nursing, he shall have the best that can be 
obtained ; and my own room is next to his, so that I can 
step in at any moment ; but that will be of almost as 
much service as if a hippopotamus were to do him the 
same kindness. Nevertheless, I have blistered, and pow- 
dered, and pilled him and made my observation on 
medical science and the sad and comic aspects of human 
misery. 

Excuse this illegible scrawl, for I am writing almost 
in the dark. Remember me to Mrs. Fields. As regards 
myself, I almost forgot to say that I am perfectly well. 
If you could find time to write Mrs. Hawthorne and 
tell her so, it would be doing me a great favor, for I 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 67 

doubt whether I can find an opportunity just now to^do 
it myself. You would be surprised to see how stalwart 
I have become in this little time. 

Your friend, 

N. H. 

Barely more than a month later, Hawthorne, travel- 
ing with another friend, Franklin Pierce, died in New 
Hampshire. Through the years that followed, the 
friendship of the Fieldses with his widow and children 
afforded many occasions for brief affectionate record in 
the chronicles of Charles Street.^ 

The two entries that follow touch, respectively, upon 
glimpses of Hawthorne's immediate family at Concord, 
in the summer of 1865, and of his surviving sister in the 
summer of 1866. 

Sunday J July 9, 1865. — Passed Friday in Concord. 
Called at the Emersons, but were disappointed to find 
them all in town, Jamie particularly, who wished to tell 
him that his new essay on Character is not suited to the 
magazine. Ordinary readers would not understand him 
and would consider it blasphemous. He thinks it would 
do more good if delivered simply to his own disciples 
first, in a volume of new essays uniform with the others. 

Dined with Sophia Hawthorne and the children, the 
first real visit since that glorious presence has departed. 

^ In Rose Hawthorne Lathrop's Memories of Hawthorne the relation 
between the two households is indicated in a sentence containing the nick- 
names of Mr. and Mrs. Fields: "My father also tasted the piquant flavors 
of merriment and luxury in this exquisite domicile of Heart's-Ease and 
Mrs. Meadows." 



68 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

What an altered household ! She feels very lonely and is 
like a reed. I fear the children find small restraint from 
her. Poor child ! How tired she is ! Will God spare her 
further trial, I wonder, and take her to his rest ^ . . . 
Went to call on Sophia Thoreau.' . . . Wc s;iw a letter 
from Froude, the historian, to H. T., as warmly appre- 
ciative as it was possible for a letter to be; also "long 
good histories," as his sister said, from his admirer 
Cholmondely. His journal is in thirty-two volumes and 
when J. T. F. spoke of wishing for an editor to condense 
these, she said there was no hurry and she thought the 
man would come. We spoke of Sanborn. She said, " He 
knows a great deal, but I never associate him with my 
brother." 

She is a woman borne duwn with ill health. She 
seemed to possess, as we saw her, something of the self- 
sustaining power of her brother, the same repose and 
confidence in her fate, as being always good. Dear S. 1 1, 
says she has this when she thinks of her brother, but 
often loses it when the surface of her life becomes irri- 
tated and she is disabled for work. Her aged mother, 
learning we were there, got up and dressed herself and 
came down, to her daughter's great surprise. She has 
an immense care in that old lady evidently. 

Ju/y 24, 1866. — We left just before eleven for Ames- 
bury, to see Mr. Whittier, driving over to Beverly in 
an open wagon. It was one of the perfect days. As 
Keats said once, the sky sat "upon our senses like a 
sapphire crown." We turned away after a time from the 

' Thorca.i's y(jjni;cr sister. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 69 

high road into a wood path, picking our way somewhat 
slowly to avoid the overhanging bushes and the rainy 
pools left in the ruts. We soon found ourselves near a 
place called Mt. Serat where we knew Miss Hawthorne 
lived, the only surviving sister of Nathaniel, and Mr. 
Fields determined at once to call upon her. To my sur- 
prise, in spite of the fine weather and her woodland life 
habitually, she was at home, and came down immedi- 
ately as if she were sincerely glad to see us. She is a 
small woman, with small fine features, round full face, 
fresh-looking in spite of years, brilliant eyes, nervous 
brow, which twists as she speaks, and very nervous 
fingers. In one respect she differed from her brother — 
she was exquisitely neat (nor do I mean to convey the 
idea by this that he was unneat, but he always gave you 
a sense of disregarded trifles about his person and we fre- 
quently recall his reply to me when I offered to brush his 
coat one morning, "No, no, I never brush my coat, it 
wears it out 1"), and gave you a sense of being particu- 
lar in little things. I seemed to see in her another dif- 
ference — a deterioration because of too great solitude 
— pov/ers rusted — a decaying beauty — while with Haw- 
thorne soUtude fed his genius, solitude and the pressure 
of necessity. Utter solitude lames the native power of a 
woman even more than that of a man, for her natural 
growth is through her sympathies. She is a woman of no 
common mould, however. Lucy Larcom calls her a 
hamadryad, and says she belongs in the woods and 
should be seen there. I wish to see her again upon her 
own ground. She asked us almost immediately if we 



70 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

would not come with her to the woods, but our time 
was too short. From thence we held our way, and soon 
came by train to Newburyport and Amesbury. Whittier 
was at home, ready with an enthusiastic welcome. 

To these memorials of Hawthorne must be added 
yet another, copied from a pencilled sheet preserved by 
Mrs. Fields in an envelope endorsed in her handwriting, 
" The original of a precious and extraordinary letter 
written by Mrs. Nathaniel Hawthorne while her husband 
lay dead." Printed now, I believe for the first time, 
nearly sixty years after it was written, it rings with a de- 
votion and exaltation which time is pt)werless to touch: 

I wish to speak to you, Annie. 

A person of a more uniform majesty never wore 
mortal form." 

In the most retired privacy it was the same as in 
the presence of men. 

The sacred veil of his eycliels he scarcely lifted to 
himself — such an unviolatcd sanctuary as was his 
nature, I, his inmost wife, never conceived nor knew. 

So absolute a modesty was not before joined to so 
lofty a self-respect. 

But what must have been that self-respect that he 
never in the smallest particular dishonored ! 

A conscience more void of offense never bore witness 
to GOD within. 

It was the innocence of a baby and the grand com- 
prehension of a sage. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 71 

To me — himself — even to me who was himself in 
unity — he was to the last the holy of holies behind 
the cherubim. 

So unerring a judgment that a word from him would 
settle with me a chaos of doubts and questions that 
seemed perplexing to ordinary apprehension. 

So equal a justice that I often wondered if he were 
human in this — for this seemed to partake of omnis- 
cience both of love and insight. 

An impartiality of regard that solved all men and 
subjects in one alembick. 

Truth and right alone he deigned to regard. Far 
below him was every other consideration. 

A tenderness so infinite — so embracing — that 
GOD'S alone could surpass it. It folded the loathsome 
leper in as soft a caress as the child of his home affec- 
tions — was not that divine ! 

Was it not Christianity in one action 1 What a be- 
quest to his children — what a new revelation of Christ 
to the world was that ! And for him — whom the sight 
and touch of unseemliness and uncleanness caused to 
shudder as an Eolian string shudders in the tempest. 

Annie 1 to the last action in this house he was as 
lofty, as majestic, as imperial and as gentle — as in 
the strength of his prime, as on the day he rose upon 
my eye and soul a King among men by divine right ! 

When he awoke that early dawn and found himself 
unawares standing among the "Shining Ones" do you 
think they did not suppose he had been always with 
them — one of themselves ? Oh, blessed be GOD for 



72 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

so soft a translation — as an infant wakes on its 
mother's breast so he woke on the bosom of GOD and 
can never be weary any more, nor see nor touch an 
unclean thing. A demand for beauty and perfection 
that was inexorable. Yet though a flaw or a crack 
gave him so fine agony, no one, no one was ever so 
tolerant as he ! 



I lawrhornc's allusion to Alcott brings the figure of that 
Concord personage on the scene. The picture of him in 
Charles Street is so sharpened in outline by certain 
remarks upon him by the elder Henry James, a some- 
what more frequent visitor, that the passages relating 
to the two men are here joined together. The first 
recorded glimpses of James occurred in the course of a 
visit to Newport. 

September 23, 1863. — Received a visit at Newport 
from Henry James. His son was badly wounded in two 
places at Gettysburg. He spoke of the reviews of his 
work among other topics. " Who wrote the review in the 
Examiner?" asked Mr. F. "Oh! that was merely 
Freeman Clarke," he replied ; "he is a smuggler in theol- 
ogy antl feels towards me much as a contraband towards 
an exciseman ?" Speakingof fashion, he said, "there was 
good in it," although it appears to be a drawback to the 
residents here while it lasts. He anticipates a change in 
European affairs; the age of ignorance is to pass away 
and strong democratic tendencies will soon pervade 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 73 

Europe. The march of civilization will work its revenge 
against aristocratic England, he believes. 

Mr. James considers that people make a mistake to 
expect reason from Carlyle. "He is an artist, a wilful 
artist, and no reasoner. He has only genius." 

October 16, 1863. — Mr. Alcott breakfasted with us. 
He said all vivid new life was well described by his 
daughter Louisa. She was happier now that she had 
made a success. "She was formerly not content to wait, 
but so soon as she became content, then good fortune 
came, as she always does." I told him we enjoyed 
deeply reading his MSS. of "The Rhapsodist" (Emer- 
son) last night. He said he thought it was finally 
brought into presentable shape! "When in a more im- 
perfect condition," he continued, "I read it to Mr. 
Emerson. The modest man could only keep silent at 
such a time, but he conveyed to me the idea that he 
should prefer the paper should not be printed in the 
'Commonwealth.' Later I again read it, when he said, 
'If I were dead.' I have reason to believe that in its 
present shape he would not object to its presentation." ^ 
He talked of his own valuable library and asked what 
he should do with it by and by. J. T. F. suggested it 
should go to the Union Club, which pleased him much. 
"That is the place," said he. "If it were known this 
was my intention, might I not also be entitled to con- 
sideration at the Club.?" 

I In 1865 Alcott printed privately and anonymously the essay, Emerson, 
which appeared later in his acknowledged volume, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
an Estimate of his Character and Genius (Boston, 1882). This was evi- 
dently The Rhapsodist. 



74 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Among his books is a copy of Milton's "World of 
Words," owned by Sir Ferdinand Gorges, who early 
colonized the state of Maine. 

He talked of Thoreau. "There will be seven or eight 
volumes of his works. Next should come the letters, 
with the commendatory poems prefixed. Come up to 
Concord and we will talk it over. If you go to see Miss 
Thoreau, arrange to talk with her in the absence of the 
mother, who would interrupt and speak again of the 
whole matter. Make Helen ^ feel that Henry will receive 
as much for his books as if he had made his own bar- 
gain, for he was good at a bargain and they are a little 
hard — that is, they do not understand all the bearings 
(jf many subjects." 

The good old man has come to Boston, being asked 
to perform funeral ceremonies over the bodies of two 
children. He asked for my Vaughan. ".A beautiful 
poem which is not known is much at such a time," he 
observed inquiringly. To which I heartily responded. 

Mr. Emerson came in to see Mr. Fields today. "I 
shall reconsider my reluctance to have Mr. Alcott's 
article published provided he will obtain consideration 
by it," was his generous speech. He said he had begun 
to prepare a new volume of poems, "but I must go 
down the harbor before I can finish a little poem about 
the islands. I took steamboat yesterday and went down, 
but a mist came up and my visit was to no purpose." 

February 19, 1864. — This morning early called upon 
Mrs. Mott of Pennsylvania. Found Mr. James with 

' lliurcau's oilier sister. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 75 

her. He observed that circumstances had placed him 
above want, and inheritance had given him a position 
in the world which precluded his having any knowledge 
of the temptations which beset many men. His virtues 
were the result of his position rather than of character 
— an affair of temperament. He said society was to 
blame for much of the crime in it, and as for that poor 
young man who committed the murder at Maiden, it 
was a mere fact of temperament or inheritance. He 
soon broke off his talk, saying it was "pretty well to be 
caught in the middle of such weighty topics in the pres- 
ence of two ladies at 10 o'clock in the morning." Then 
we talked of* houses. He wishes a furnished house for a 
year in Boston until his departure. 

July 28. — Still hot, with a russet sun. Mr. and Mrs. 
Henry James called in the evening. He talked of "Ster- 
ling." "He was not stereotyped, but living, his eye 
burned ; he was very vivacious, although he saw Death 
approaching. He was one of the choicest of friends." 
Afterward he talked of Alcott's visit to Carlyle. Car- 
lyle told Mr. James he found him a terrible old bore. 
It was almost impossible to be rid of him, and impossible 
also to keep him, for he would not eat what was set 
before him. Carlyle had potatoes for breakfast and 
sent for strawberries for Mr. Alcott, who, when they 
arrived, took them with the potatoes upon the same 
plate, where the two juices ran together and fraternized. 
This shocked Carlyle, who would eat nothing himself, 
but stormed up and down the room instead. "Mrs. 
Carlyle is a naughty woman," said Mr. J., "she wishes 



76 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

to make a sensation and docs not mind sometimes fol- 
lowing and imitating her husband's way." Mr. J. saiil 
Aicott once made him a visit in New York and when 
he found he could not go to Brooklyn to attend Mr. 
A.'s "conversation," the latter said, "Very well; he 
would talk over the heads with him then before it was 
time to go." They got into a great battle about the 
premises, during which Mr, Aicott talked of the Divine 
paternity as relating to himself, when Mr. James broke 
in with, "My dear sir, you have not fouml your mater- 
nity yet. You are an egg half hatched. The shells are 
yet sticking about your head." To this Mr. A. replied, 
"Mr. James, you are damaged goods ami will come up 
damaged goods in eternity.'* 

We laughed much before they left at a story about a 
man who called to ask money of John Jacob Astor. 
The gentleman was ushered into a twilight library, 
where he fancied himself alone until he heard a grunt 
from a deep chair, the high back of which was turned 
towards him ; then the gentleman advanced, found Mr. 
Astor there and saluted him. He opened the business 
of the subscription to him, and was about to unfold 
the paper when Mr. Astor suddenly crietl out, "Oo — 
oo — oo — ooo(K>oo!" "What is the matter, my dear 
sir," said he, "are you ill ? [growing alarmed] Where is 
the bell ? I^t me ring the bell." Then running to the 
door, he shouted, " Madame, madame." Then to Mr. 
Astor, "Pray, sir, what is the matter ?" "Oo — oo — oo." 
"Have you a pain in your side!!" In a moment the 
household came running thither, and as the housekeeper 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 77 

bent over him, he cried, "Oo — 00 — these horrid 
wretches sending to me for money!!" As may be be- 
lieved, our friend of the subscription paper beat a hasty 
retreat and here ended also our evening. 

A few days later there was an evening with Sumner 
and others, who talked of affairs in Washington. Mr. 
and Mrs. James were of the company. "These men," 
wrote Mrs. Fields, "despond with regard to the civil 
government. They have more faith that our military 
affairs are doing well. Chiefly they look to Sherman as 
the great man. Mr. James was silent; he believes in 
Lincoln." And there is the final note: "We must not 
forget Mr. James's youth, who was 'aninted with isle 
of Patmos.'" 

July 10, 1866. — Forceythe Wlllson came and talked 
purely, lovingly, and like the pure character he aspires 
to be. He said Mr. Alcott talked with him of tempera- 
ments lately, with much wisdom. He said the blonde 
was nearest to perfection, that was the heavenly type. 
"You are not a blonde," said the seer calmly, and, said 
Willson to me, "I was much amused and pleased too; 
for when I regarded the old man more closely I dis- 
covered he himself was a blonde." 

October 6, 1867. — Mr. Henry James and his daughter 

came to call. We chanced to ask him about Dr. G of 

New York, a physician of wide reputation in the diag- 
nosis of disease. He is an old man now, but with so 
large a practice that he will see no new patients. Mr. 



78 mp:mories of a hostess 

James says, however, that he is a humbug, that is, as I 
understood. He is a man of discernment which he turns 
to the best account, but not a man of deep insight or 
unwonted development. Suddenly J. remembered that 

there was once a Dr. of New York who was also 

famous. The moment his name was mentioned Mr. 
James became quite a new man. His enthusiasm flamed. 

Dr. died at the early age of ^'^8, and, according to 

the saying of the world, insane. "Yet he was no more 
insane than I am at this moment as far as the action of 
his mind was concerned, which was always perfectly 
clear. Several years before his death he was pursued by 
spirits which often kept him awake all night. His wife 
was a heavenly woman and a Swedenborgian. The 
spirits did not come to her, but she was persuaded that 
they did come to him. They so disturbed his life that 
he used to say he was ready to die, in order to pursue 
his tormentors and ferret out the occasion of his trouble. 
At one time they told him that in every age a man had 
been selected to do the bidding of the I^rd God, to be 
the Lord Christ of the time, and he must fit himself 
to be that man. They prescribed for him therefore cer- 
tain fasts and austerities which he religiously fulfilled, 
only asking in return an interview in which some sign 
should be given him. They promised faithfully, but 
when the time arrived it was postponed ; and this oc- 
curred repeatedly, until he felt sure of the deceit of the 
parties concerned." 

Through the medium of these spirits Dr. be- 
came at length estranged from his wife. He went West 



CONCORD AND Cx^MBRIDGE 79 

to obtain a divorce, and while on this strange errand 
occurred a breach between himself and Mr. James. The 
latter wrote him a letter urging him away from the dead, 
which the doctor took as interference. The poor man 
returned to New York and at length shot himself. His 
wife never harbored the least animosity against him for 
his undeserved treatment. (Mr. J. looked like an invalid, 
but was full of spirit and kindness. He not infrequently 
speaks severely of men and things. Analysis is his 
second nature.) 

March 5, 1869. — Jamie had an unusually turbulent 
and exciting day, and was thoroughly weary when night 
came. Henry James came first, and had gone so far as 
to abuse Emerson pretty well when the latter came in. 
"How do you do, Emer-son," he said, with his peculiar 
intonation and voice, as if he had expected him on the 
heels of what had gone before. Mr. James calls his new 
book, "The Secret of Swedenborg." Jamie thinks his 
article on Carlyle too abusive, especially as he stayed in 
his house, or was there long and familiarly. But his 
love of country was bitterly stung by Carlyle in "Shoot- 
ing Niagara and After." 

Saturday^ March 13, 1869. — Mr. Emerson read in 
the afternoon. The subject was Wordsworth in chief, 
but the time was far too short to do justice to the notes 
he had made. In the evening we went to Cambridge to 
hear Mr. James read his paper on "Woman." We took 
tea first with the family and afterward listened to the 
lecture. He took the highest, the most natural, and the 
most religious point of view from which I have heard 



8o MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

the subject discussed. He dealt metaphysically with it, 
after his own fashion, showing the subtle inherent 
counterparts of man to woman, showing to what ex- 
tremes either would be led without the other. He spoke 
with unmingled disgust of the idea of woman, except for 
union in behalf of some charity for the time, forsaking 
the sanctity and privacy of her home to battle and unsex 
herself in the hot and dusty arena of the world. 

(The members of the Woman's Club asked him to 
write this lecture for them. He did not wish to spare 
the time, but promised to do so if they would invite 
him afterward to deliver it in public. They disliked 
the lecture so much that, although they ^^/V/ send him a 
public invitation, there were but twenty people present.) 

Nothing could be holier or more inspiring than his 
ideal of womanhood. She is the embodied social idea, 
the genius of home, the light of life — "ever desiring 
novelty her life without man would be a long chase 
from one Held to another, accompanied by sojt gospel 
truth" 

He didn't fail to whip the "pusillanimous" clergy, 
and as the room was overstocked with them, it was odd 
to watch the eflfect. Mr. James is perfectly brave, 
almost inapprehensive, of the storm of opinion he 
raises, and he is quite right. Nothing could be more 
clearly his own and inherent, than his views in this 
lecture, nothing which the times need more. He helps 
to lay that dreadful phantom of yourself which appears 
now and then conjured up by the right people, har- 
anguing the crowd and endeavoring to be something for 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 8i 

which you were clearly never intended by Heaven. I 
think I shall never forget a pretty little niece of Mrs. 
Dale Owen, who was with her at the first Club meet- 
ing in New York. Her face was full of softness and 
Madonna-like beauty, but she was learning to con- 
tract her brow over ideas and become "strong" in 
her manner of expressing them. It was a kind of night- 
mare. 

Summer, 1871. — Mr. Alcott, Mr. Howison, Mr. 
Harris, the latter two lovers of philosophy, have been 
here this week. Channing is still writing poems in 
Concord, says Alcott. The latter smiles blandly at his 
own former absurdities, but he does not eat meat, and 
continues his ancient manner of living among books. 
The old gentleman gave me this wild rose as he went 
away. He quoted Vaughan, talked of a book of selec- 
tions he would wish to see made, "a honey-pot into 
which one might dip at leisure," also an almanac suit- 
able for a lady, of the choicest things among the an- 
cient writers. He was full of good sayings and most 
witty and attractive. He is somewhat deaf, but he 
bears this infirmity as he has borne all the ills of life 
with a mild sweet heroism most marked and worthy of 
love and to be copied. 

Sunday, April 20, 1873. — Last night Mr. and Mrs. 
Henry James, Alice, and Mr. DeNormandie dined here. 
Mr. James looked very venerable, but was at heart 
very young and amused us much. He gave a description 
of Mr. George Bradford being run over by the horse- 
car, because of his own inadvertence in part, and of the 



82 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

good-natured crowd who insisted upon his having resti- 
tution for what he considered, in part, at least, his own 
fault. "Ain't you dead?" said one. "267 Highland 
Ave. is the number, don't forget," said another; "you 
can prosecute." "Where's my hat?" he asked meekly. 
" Better ask if ye 're not dead, and not be looking for 
your hat," said another. 

He also told us of a visit of Elizabeth Pcabody to the 
Alcotts. He said : " In Mr. A. the moral sense was wholly 
dead, and the aesthetic sense had never yet been born !" 

It may well have been after a visit to the Ficldses at 
the seashore town of Manchester that Henry James 
wrote this undated characteristic note which embodies 
the feeling of many another guest: — 

Mv DEAR FlKLDS : 

Pride ever goes before a fall. I scorned my wife's solic- 
itude about her umbrella as unworthy of an immortal 
mind, and now I am reduced to pleading with you to 
preserve my lost implement in that line, and when you 
next come to town to bring it with you and leave it for 
me at Williams' book store, corner of School Street, 
where I will reclaim it. 

Alas ! The difference between now and then ! Such 
an atmosphere as we are having this morning ! And yet 
we did not need the contrast to impress us with a lively 
seruse of the lovely house, the lovely scenes, and the 
lovely people we had left. We came home fragrant 
with the sweetest memories, and the way we have been 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 83 

making the house resound with the fame of our enjoy- 
ment would amuse you. Alice and her aunt came home 
just after us, and we have done nothing but talk since 
we arrived. Good bye ; give my love to that angelic 
woman, whom I shall remember in my last visions, 
and believe me, faithfully. 

Yours also, 

H.J. 

Henry James's letters to Mr. and Mrs. Fields, of which 
a number are preserved by the present generation of 
the James family, abound in characteristic felicities. In 
one of them — they are nearly all undated — he regrets 
his inability to read a lecture of his own at Mrs. Fields's 
invitation, on the ground that his unpublished writings 
are "all too grave and serious, not for you individually 
indeed, but for those 'slumberers inZion' who are apt, 
you know, to constitute the bulk of a parlour audience." 
in another he is evidently declining an invitation to hear 
a reading of Emerson's in Charles Street : — 

SwAMPScoTT, May 1 1 
My dear Mrs. Fields : — 

My wife — who has just received your kind note In 
rapid route to the Dedham Profane Asylum, or some- 
thing of that sort — begs leave to say, through me as a 
willing and sensitive medium, that you are one of those 
arva beata^ renowned in poetry, which, visit them never 
so often, one is always glad to revisit, which are attrac- 
tive in all seasons by their own absolute light, and with- 



84 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

out any Emersonian pansics and buttercups to make 
them so. This enthusiastic Dedhamitc says further, in 
effect, that while one is deeply grateful for your courte- 
ous offer of a seat upon your sofa to hear the Concord 
sage, she yet prefers the material banquet you summon 
us to in your dining-room, since there wc should be out 
ot the mist and able to discern between nature and 
cookery, between what cats and what is eaten at all 
events, and feel a thankful mind that we were in solid 
comfortable Charles Street, instead of the vague, wide, 
weltering galaxy, and should be sure to deem Annie and 
Jamie (/ am sure of Annie, I think my wife feels equally 
sure of Jamie) lovelier fireflies than ever sparkled in the 
cold empyrean. But alas, who shall control his destiny ? 
Not my wife, whom multitudinous cares enthrall; nor 
yet myself, whom a couple of months' enforced illness 
now constrains to a preternatural activity, lest the world 
fail of salvation. . . . 

P. S. \N ho did contrive the comical title for his lec- 
ture — "Philosophy of the Pef)ple"? I suspect it was 
a joke of J. T. V. It would be no less absurd for Emer- 
son himself to think of philosophizing than it would be 
tor the rose to think of botanizing. Emerson is the Di- 
vinely pompous rose of the philosophic garden, gorgeous 
with colour and fragrance. What a sad lookout there 
would be for tulip and violet and lily and the humble 
grape, if the rose should turn out philosophic gardener 
as well ! Philosophy of the people^ too ! But that was 
Fields, or else it was only R. W. E. after dining with V. 
at the Union Club and becoming demoralized. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 85 

The final paragraph of a single other note suggests 
in sum the relation between James and his Charles 
Street friends : — 

Speaking of Mr. Fields always reminds me of various 
things so richly endowed in the creature in all good 
gifts ; but the dominant consideration in my mind asso- 
ciated with him is his beautiful home and there chiefly 
that atmosphere and faultless womanly worth and dig- 
nity which fills it with light and warmth and makes it 
a real blessing to one's heart every time he falls within 
its precincts. Please felicitate the wretch for me, and 
believe me, my dear Mrs. Fields, 

Your true friend and servant, 
July 8. H. J. 

Though not related either to Alcott or to Henry 
James, the following entry, on October 16, 1863, should 
be preserved — and as well in this place as in another. 
It refers to the second of the three Josiah Quincys who 
were mayors of Boston in the course of the nineteenth 
century. 

Mr. Josiah Quincy dropped in to see J. T. F. He had 
lately been traveling in the West, he said. People com- 
plimented him upon his youthful appearance and his 
last letter to the President. "I am glad you liked the 
letter," he said, "but my father wrote it." At the next 
town people pressed his hand and thanked him for 
his staunch adherence to the Anti-slavery cause as 



86 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

expressed in the "Liberator." "Oh," his reply was, "that 
was my brother Edmund Quincy " ; a little farther on a 
friend complimented his brilliant story in the last "At- 
lantic" magazine. "That was by my son J. P. Quincy," 
he was obliged to answer. I*'inally, when his exploits in 
the late wars at the head of the 20th Regiment were 
recounted, he grew impatient, said it was his son 
Colonel Quincy, but he thought it high time he came 
home, instead of travelling about to receive the com- 
pliments of others. 



In giving the title, "Glimpses of Emerson," to one 
of the chapters in her "Authors and Friends," Mrs. 
Fields described accurately the use she made of her 
records and remembrances of that serene Olympian 
who glided in' and out of Boston to the awe and 
delight of those with whom he came into personal con- 
tact. "Olympian" must be the word, since "Augus- 
tan " connotes something quite too mundane to suggest 
the effect produced by Emerson upon his sympathetic 
contemporaries. Did they realize, I wonder, how fit- 
ting it was that this prophet of the harmonies of life 
should live in a place the name of which is spoken by all 
but New Englanders as if it signified not a despairing 
/V vic/is, but the very bond of peace ? All the adjec- 
tives of benignity have been bestowed upon Emerson. 
Mrs. Fields's "Glimpses" of him suggest that atmos- 
phere, as of mountain solitudes, in which he moved ; 
that air of the heights which those who moved beside 




EMERSON 
From the marble statve by Daniel Chester French in the Concord Public Library 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 87 

him were fain to breathe. His " Conversations " in pub- 
lic and private places, a form of intellectual refresh- 
ment suggested by Mrs. Fields and conducted, to 
Emerson's large material advantage, by her husband, 
appear to-day as highly characteristic of their time, — 
the sixties and seventies, — and the light thrown upon 
them by her journal illuminates not only him and her, 
but the whole society of "superior persons" in which 
Emerson was so dominating a figure. By no means all 
of that light escaped from her manuscript journals to 
the printed page of "Authors and Friends." In the 
hitherto unprinted passages now given there are fur- 
ther shafts of it, sometimes slender in themselves, but 
joining to show the very Emerson that came and went 
in Charles Street. 

There was a furtive humor in Emerson, which ex- 
pressed itself more accurately in his own words than in 
anything written about him. A pleasant trace of it is 
found in a note to Fields addressed, "My dear Editor," 
dated "Concord, October 5, 1866," and containing these 
words : "I have the more delight in your marked over- 
estimate of my poem, that I had been vexed with a 
belief that what skill I had in whistling was nearly or 
quite gone, and that I must henceforth content myself 
with guttural consonants or dissonants, and not attempt 
warbling." 

There is a clear application of the Emersonian phil- 
osophy to domestic matters in a letter written by Mrs. 
Emerson to Mrs. Fields, a week after the fire which 
drove the poet's family from his house at Concord, in 



88 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

the summer of 1872. Mrs. Fields — as if in fulfillment 
of Emerson's words on the proflFer of some previous 
hospitality: "Indeed we think that your house should 
have that name inscribed upon it — 'Hospitality'" - 
had invited the dislodged Emersons to take refuge 
under her roof. Mrs. Emerson, replying, wrote: — 

We are most happily settled in the "Old Manse," 
where our cousin, Miss Ripley, assures us we can be 
accommodated — to her satisfaction as well as our 
own — until our house is rebuilt. Only the upper half 
is destroyed and we shall, I trust, so well restore it that 
you will not know — when we shall have the pleasure 
of welcoming you there — except for its fresh appear- 
ance, that anything has happened. I should not use 
such a word as "calamity," for truly the whole event is 
a blessing rather than a misfortune. We have received 
such warm expressions of kindness from our friends, and 
have witnessed such disinterested action and brave 
daring in our town's people, that we feel — in addition 
to our happiness in the sympathy of friends in other 
places — as if Concord was a large family of personal 
friends and well-wishers. They command not only our 
gratitude but our deep respect, for their loving and 
personal self-forgetfulness. 

Mr. Emerson and Ellen join mc in affectionate and 
grateful acknowledgments to yourself and to Mr. Fields. 
Ever your friend, 

Lilian Emersom 
Concord, "July ji, 1872. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 89 

It is in the atmosphere of the mutual relation revealed 
in many letters from Emerson and his household to 
Mr. and Mrs. Fields that the following reports of en- 
counters with him — a few out of many similar pas- 
sages in her journals — should be read. 

December 3, 1863. — Last Tuesday Mr. Emerson lec- 
tured in town. Mrs. E. and Edith came to tea. She was 
troubled because she was a little late. She is a woman of 
proud integrity and real sweetness. She has an awe of 
words. They mean so much to her that her lips do not 
unlock save for truth or kindliness or beauty or wisdom. 
The lecture was for today — there was much of Carlyle, 
chastisement, and soul. After the lecture they came 
home with us and about 20 friends. Wendell Phillips 
was in his sweetest mood. He spoke of Beecher and 
Luther and of the vigorous, healthy hearts of these men 
who swayed this world. He said Hallam speaks dis- 
paragingly of Luther. I could not but think of Sydney 
Smith's friend who spoke "disparagingly of the Equa- 
tor." Alden too came in wearied after his lecture. Sena- 
tor Boutwell spoke in praise of life in Washington, the 
first man. Sunshiny Edith passed the night with us, 

January 5, 1864. — Mr. Emerson came today to see 
J. T. F. He says Mr. Blake, who holds the letters of 
Thoreau in his hands, is a terribly conscientious man, 
"a man who would even return a borrowed umbrella." 
He became acquainted with Blake when he was con- 
nected with theological matters, "and he believed 



90 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

wholly in me at that time, but one day he met Thoreau 
and he never came to my house afterwards. His con- 
scientiousness is equalled perhaps by that of George 
Bradford, who accompanied us once to hear Mr. Web- 
ster speak. There was an immense crowd, Mr. Brad- 
ford became separated from the party, and was swept 
into a capital place within the lines. When he found 
himself well ensconced in front of the speaker, he turned 
about and saw us, and with a look of great concern said : 
*I have no ticket for this place and I can't stay.* We 
besought him not to be so foolish as to give up the place, 
but nothing would tempt him to keep it." 
He was in fine mood. 

IVednesdayy September 6. — Mr. Emerson went to see 
Mr. Fields. "There are fine lines in Lowell's Ode," he 
said. "Yes," answered J. T. F., "it is a fine poem." " I 
have found fine lines in it," replied the seer. "I told 
Lowell once," he continued, "that his humorous poems 
gave me great pleasure ; they were worth all his serious 
poetry. He tlid not take it very well, but muttered, 'The 
Washers of the Shroud,' and walked away." 

J. T. F. found Emerson sitting by the window in his 
new office, highly delighted with it. 

September TfO^ 1865. — Jamie went to dine with the 
Saturday Club. Professor Nichol was his guest. Sam. 
Ward (Julia's brother) was Longfellow's. Lowell, 
Holmes, Hoar, Emerson and a few others only were 
present. Judge Hoar related an amusing anecdote of 
having sent a beautiful basket of pears to the Concord 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 91 

exhibition this year. He said Mr. Emerson was one of 
the judges, and he thought he would be pleased with the 
pears because a few years ago he was in the garden one 
day and, observing that very tree, which was not then 
very flourishing, had told Judge Hoar that more iron 
and more animal matter were needed in the soil. " Forth- 
with," said the Judge, "I planted all my old iron kettles 
and a cat and a dog at the foot of the tree and these 
pears were the result. I have kept two favorite terriers 
ready to plant if necessary beside, but the fruit for the 
present seems well enough without them." 

Judge Hoar said also that he knew a man once with a 
prodigious memory ; before dinner he could recall Gen- 
eral Washington, after dinner he remembered Chris- 
topher Columbus ! 

Saturday y October ^^ 1865. — Tuesday, 3, Edith Emer- 
son was married to William Forbes. The old house 
threw wide its hospitable doors and the stairway and 
rooms were covered with leaves and flowers and the 
whole place was as beautiful as earthly radiance and joy 
can make a home. Poor Mrs. Hawthorne, laden with 
her many sorrows, threw off her black robe for that day 
that she might rejoice with others. Edith made her own 
marriage wreath, and even Mr. Emerson wore white 
gloves. Old Mrs. Ripley and many aged and many 
beautiful persons were there. 

In 1 866 Emerson, long exiled from the good graces of 
his Alma Mater, was restored to them by the bestowal of 
an honorary degree. In 1867 the restoration was com- 



92 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

pleted by his election as an Overseer of Harvard College 
and his appearance, after an interval of thirty years, as 
the Phi Beta Kappa orator. In this capacity he read his 
address on the "Progress of Culture" on July i8, 1867. 
Of the manner in which he did it, and of the effect he 
produced on his hearers, Lowell wrote immediately to 
Norton, in a letter often quoted, "He boggled, he lost 
his place, he had to put on his glasses ; but it was as if a 
creature from some fairer world had lost his way in our 
fogs, and it was owr fault, not his." "Phi Beta Day" was 
still a local festival of much brilliance, which was thus 
reflected in 1867 on the pages of Mrs. Fields's journal. 

Thursday J July 18, 1867. — Arose at five and worked 
in my garden until breakfast. Then it was time to dress 
for Phi Beta at Cambridge. We drove out, leaving 
home at nine o'clock. We expected Professor .Andrew D. 
White to g(j with us, but he called still earlier to say he 
had been summoned to a business meeting by President 
Hill. The day was soft and pleasant with a clouded sky. 
We were among the first on the ground, but we had the 
pleasure of waiting a few moments to see our friends 
arrive before we were admitted to the church. Only 
ladies went in. I went with Mrs. Quincy, the poet's ^ 
wife (poet for the day, for he is apt to disclaim this 
title usually), and we found good places in the gallery ; 
by and by, however, Mrs. Dana beckoned to me to come 
and sit with them, so I changed my seat to a place on 
the lower floor. It was an impressive sight to see those 

' Josiah Phillips Quincy. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 93 

men come in (though they kept us waiting until twelve 
o'clock) — Lowell, Emerson, Dana, Hale, and all the 
good brave men we have with few exceptions. First 
came Quincy's poem, then Mr. Emerson's address — 
both excellent after the manner of the men. Poor Mr. 
E.'s MSS. was in inextricable confusion, and in spite of 
the chivalry of E. E. Hale, who hunted up a cushion that 
he might see better, the whole -matter seemed at first 
out of joint in the reader's eyes. However that may have 
been, it was far from out of joint in our eyes, being noble 
in aim and influence, magnetic, imaginative. I felt 
grateful that I had lived till that moment and as if I 
might come home to live and work better. Thank 
Heaven for such a master ! He was evidently put out 
and angry with himself for his disorder and, taking Mr. 
Fields's arm as he came from the assembly, had to be 
somewhat reassured that it was not an utter failure. 

Mrs. Dana tried to carry me to lunch, most kindly. 
I could not make up my mind to go anywhere after 
what I had heard, but for a moment to see if the good 
Jameses were well, and thence homeward. It seemed, 
if I could ever work, it must be then. 

At half-past six Jamie returned from the dinner, 
where J. R. Lowell presided in the most elegant and bril- 
liant manner. In calling out Agassiz he told the story 
of the sailor who was swallowed by a whale and finding 
time rather heavy on his hands thought he would in- 
scribe his name on the bridge of bone above his head ; 
but looking for a place, jack-knife in hand, he found 
that Jonah was before him — so he said Agassiz, etc. 



94 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

And of Holmes he said that the Professor and himself 
were like two buckets in a well : when one of them pre- 
sided at a dinner, the other made it a point to bring a 
poem; when one bucket came up full, the other went 
down empty. And so on through all. Phillips Brooks, 
the distinguished preacher of Philadelphia, was there, 
and many other men of note. 

Out of the many notes relating to Emerson's lectures, 
a few passages may be taken as typical. Perhaps the 
best unpublished pages are those on which the philos- 
opher is seen, with his wife and daughter, against the 
social background of the time and place. 

October 19, 1868. — The weeks spin away so fast I 
have no time for records, and yet last Sunday and Mon- 
day we had two pleasant parties, especially Monday, 
after Mr. Emerson's first lecture. We were I4 at supper. 
Mrs. Putnam and Miss Oakcy among the guests, but 
the Emersons, who are always pleased and always full 
of kindliness, enjoyment, and Christianity, I believe give 
more pleasure than they receive wherever they are 
entertained. Edward is full of his grape-culture in 
Milton, Ellen full of good works, Mrs. Emerson very 
hot against her brother's opponents, Morton and those 
who take sides with him now that Morton himself is in 
the earth-mould first.' Mr. Emerson, alive and alert on 
all topics, talked openly of the untruthfulness of the 

' An .illusion to the controversy over the claims of Dr, Jackson anJ 
Dr. Morton to the discovery of ether. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 95 

Peabodys, of the beauty of " Charles Auchester," of Mr. 
Alcott's school, of Dana's politics as superior perhaps 
to Butler and yet not altogether sound and worthy, con- 
servatism being so deep in his blood. 

Thursday we drove our friends to Milton Blue Hill 
after the Emersons had gone, returned to dine and 
Selwyn's theatre in the evening. Herman Merivale was 
of the party — son of Thackeray's friend. The 
Stephens went on Wednesday. Thursday we dined in 
Milton with Mrs. Silsbee; it was a wet nasty day. 
Friday, Saturday and Sunday we were quietly enough 
here, Jamie with a fearful cold. Surely all this is unim- 
portant enough as regards ourselves; but I like to re- 
member when Mr. Emerson came and what he said and 
how he looked, for it is a pure benediction to see him 
and I honor and love him. 

February 20, 1869. — Heard Emerson again, and 
Laura was with me ; we drank up every word eagerly. 
He read Donne, Daniel, and especially Herbert; also 
vers de societe; the facility of these old divines giving 
them a power akin to what has produced these familiar 
rhymes. 

He said Herbert was full of holy quips ; fond of using 
a kind of irony towards God, and quoted appropriately. 
Beautiful things of Herrick, too, he read, but treated 
Vaughan rather unjustly, we thought. 

Lowell sat just behind; I could imagine his running 
commentary on many of Mr. Emerson's remarks, which 
were often more Emersonian than universal, or true. 
The facility of the old poets seemed to impress him with 



96 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

almost undue reverence. He Is extremely natural and 
easy in manner and speech during these readings. He 
bent his brows and shut his eyes, endeavoring to recall 
a passage from Ben Jonson as if we were at his own 
dinner-table, and at hist when he gave it up said, "It 
is all the more provoking as I do not doubt many a 
friend here might help me out with it." 

His respect for literature, often in these degenerate 
days smiled upon from some imaginary hills by sur- 
rounding multitudes, is absolute and regnant. It is 
religion and life, ;uul he reiterating them in every 
form. 

The first and second of the "Conversations" arranged 
for Emerson by Fields are duly described in the journal. 
In the evening that followed the second, Emerson and 
his daughter dined at Charles Street, in company with 
Longfellow and his daughter Alice, William Morris 
Hunt and his wife. Dr. Holmes, and the Fieldses. The 
scene and talk were recorded by the hostess. 

. . . Coming home, Ellen's trunk had not arrived, 
so she came, like a gcK)d child, most difficult in a woman 
grown, to dinner in her travelling dress. Alice Long- 
fellow looked very pretty in a polonaise of lovely olive 
brown over black; a little feather of the same color in 
her hair. Rooshue [Mrs. flunt] and her husband came 
in their everydays too. I wore a lilac polonaise with 
a yellow rose — I speak of the latter because it seemed 
to please W. M. Hunt to see the dash of color. . . . 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 97 

Hunt convulsed us with a story of seeing a man run 
through by an iron bolt, when a distinguished physi- 
cian is called in; the physician asks if he can sleep 
well, and a thousand and one questions of like rele- 
vancy, to all of which the patient only replies by gasps 
of agony. Hunt acted the whole scene famously. The 
sunset too delighted him as it gilded the old sheds back 
of the house and made them "like Solomon's temple." 
Longfellow has written to Miss Rossetti, the author of 
the "Shadow of Dante," to thank her for her pleasant 
book. He asks her the difficult question why Dante 
puts Venus nearest the sun. Also he points out her 
fault of saying the spirits of the blest inhabited the 
planets, whereas Dante clearly states that they all 
lived in one heaven but visited the planets. 

The truth of Hawthorne's tale of the minister with 
the black veil was hunted up. His name was Moody 
and he was one of the Emerson family. It seems the 
poor man in his youth shot a boy by accident, and as 
he grew older a morbid temper settled upon him and he 
did not think himself fit to preach; so he withdrew 
from the ministry but taught a smajl school, always 
wore a black veil, literally a handkerchief. Ellen said 
her aunt was taught by him and she appeared anxious 
to set the matter right. Rose Hawthorne and her hus- 
band have been to see Mr. Emerson, and he likes them 
both well ; thinks Rose looks happy and the young man 
promising, which is much. There is hope of Una's 
recovery and return. 

After dinner, we ladies looked over manuscripts for 



98 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

a time until Longfellow went — when Mrs. Hunt went 
to the piano and played and sang. Finally he came, and 
they sang their little ducts together and afterward she 
sang a song with words by Channing about a pine tree, 
set to a scrap of a sonata by Helen Bell, and after that a 
touching German song with English words — then she 
read Cciia's [Mrs. Thaxter's] new poem to Mr. Emerson, 
called "The Tryst." She read it only pretty well, which 
disgusted her ; and she said it reminded her of William's 
reading, which was the worst she ever knew ; he could 
literally stop in the middle of a sentence because it 
happened to be the bottom of a page, and ask her what 
it meant. At that he took Celia's poem and reail it 
through wortl for word like a school-boy, K)oking up at 
her to see if he was right and should go on. She laughed 
immotlerately, and as for Mr. Emerson, J. said his eyes 
left their wonted sockets and went to laugh far back in 
his brain. 

Putting down his book. Hunt launched off into his 
own life as a painter. His lonely position here without 
anyone to lcK)k up to in his art — his idea of art being 
entirely misunderstood, his determination wo/ to paint 
cloth and cheeks, but to paint the glory of age and the 
light of truth. He became almost too excited to find 
words, but when he did grasp a phrase, it was such a 
fine one that it went a great way. His wife sat by mak- 
ing running comments, but when he said, "If any man 
who was talking could not be heard, he would naturally 
try to talk so that he could be heard," we tried to urge 
him to stand firm and to assure him that his efforts were 




A CORNER OF THE CHARLES STREET LIBRARY 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 99 

neither lost nor in vain. "If the books you wrote were 
left all dusty and untouched upon the shelves, don't 
you think you would try to write so that people should 
want them ? I am sure you would." His wife tried to 
say he must stand in the way he knew was right — as 
did we all — but he seemed to think it too hard, too 
Sisyphus-like a labor. The portrait of little Paul is 
still unsold. After keeping the carriage waiting one hour 
and a half, they went — a most interesting pair. 

Tuesday J April 23. — Shakespeare's birthday. Emer- 
son and his daughter passed the night with us and 
Edith Davidson, Ellen's "daughter," came to break- 
fast. We talked over again the pleasure of the night 
before. Emerson had never heard Hunt talk before and 
had seldom found Longfellow so expansive. Holmes 
met J. in the course of the day, and told him he had 
a real good time, though he did have a thumping head- 
ache — he was much pleased with Alice Longfellow. 

Tuesday^ May 21. — Call from Mr. Emerson, Mrs. E. 
and Ellen. They came in a body to thank me, which 
Mrs. Emerson did in a little set speech after her own 
fashion, at which we all laughed heartily — especially 
at the "profit" clause. Indeed we had a very merry 
time altogether. Mr. Emerson gave "Queenie" per- 
mission to look all about the room, "for indeed there 
was not such another in all Boston — no indeed [half 
soliloquizing], not such another." Then he looked about 
and told them the wrong names of the painters, and 
would have been entirely satisfied if he had not referred 
to me, when I was obliged to tell the truth and so from 



lOO 



MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 



that time he made me speaker. He said he should do 
his very best for the university class for women for next 
December to make up for having served them so badly 
this winter. He said I had very goitly reminded him of 







^^J^<^<^^S>A..-!J2^ p-.^ 



%: 




^^^^ 



^CuL.'''y^yC'<^ jyCC-'^^^tsC^ , 



From a no/e of Ei 



I's to Afrs. I'icLis 



his entire forgetfulness to fulfil an engagement or half- 
engagement to come to speak to them this winter. 
"Queenie" told me she was one of the few persons who 
had read Miss Mitford's poems, "Blanche" and all the 
rest, and liked them very much. So the various por- 
traits of the old lady interested her much. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE loi 

They came down to Boston, Mrs. E. said, on purpose 
to make this call. I had just returned home from along 
drive about town on business, so it was the best possible 
moment for me. 

Our first thought this morning (J's. and mine) was, 
how could Mr. Emerson finish his course of " Conversa- 
tions," which had been so brilliant until the last, in so 
unsatisfactory a manner. His' matter was for the most 
part old, and he finished with reading well-known hymns 
of Dr. Watts and Mrs. Barbauld. I fear we were all 
disappointed. Some of the lectures (especially the one 
on "Love") have been so fine that we were bitterly 
disappointed. 

A later reference to Emerson shows him in Philadel- 
phia, and through the eyes of a qualified observer there. 
The passage was written at Manchester-by-the-Sea, to 
which Mr. and Mrs. Fields had begun to pay summer 
visits even before 1872, and where they soon acquired 
that cottage of their own on "Thunderbolt Hill," which 
belied its name in serving as the most peaceful of retreats 
for Mrs. Fields and the friends she was constantly sum- 
moning to her side through all the remainder of her life. 

Tuesday^ August 25, 1872. — Miss A. Whitney came 
Saturday and remained until Monday morning. Sun- 
day evening we passed at Mrs. Towne's. Mrs. Annis 
Wister^ of Pennsylvania had just arrived, a dramatic 

^ Daughter of the Rev. William Henry Furness, of Philadelphia, and trans- 
lator of German novels. 



I02 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

creature, who tells and tells again at request, with as 
much amiability as talent, her wonderful story of 
Father Donne, the Irish priest, who performed the 
marriage ceremony for one of her servants. Mrs. Wis- 
ter, in spite of a lisp, has a thoroughly clear enuncia- 
tion. She never leaves a sentence unfinished nor suffers 
the imagination to complete any corner of her picture. 
She is exceedingly lively and witty, and Miss Whitney, 
whose mind is quite different and altogether introverted, 
busied over her artistic, conceptions, could not help a 
feeling of envy. The gift of narration, so rare in this 
country, has been carefully cultivated by Mrs. Wister, 
and poor Miss Whitney could only wonder and admire. 
I could see her fine large eyes glow with pleasure and 
desire as she listened to her. Mrs. Wister told me an odd 
thing, which shows her as an imlividual. She asked me 
how the testimonial to Mr. Emerson was progressing, as 
her father was much interested and thought nothing he 
possessed too good to be given at once to Mr. Emerson, 
nor indeed worthy of his acceptance, and she would like 
to write him. I told her I believed the sum had reached 
^10,000, and had already been presented. This led her 
to say the friendship of her father for Mr. Emerson, 
and indeed their mutual friendship, as she then believed 
it to be, dated back to their youth, when Mr. Emerson 
was first writing his poems and delighting over the 
illustrations her father would make for them. As she 
grew up, she became dissatisfied at the relation be- 
tween them. She thought Mr. Furness, her father, 
gave much more to Mr. Emerson in the way of friend- 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 103 

ship than Mr. Emerson ever appreciated. This went 
on until she became about eighteen years of age, when 
Mr. Emerson chanced to be visiting them in Pennsyl- 
vania. One day she was standing upon the stairs near 
the front door, and Mr. Emerson was ready to go out 
and waiting there for her father, who had withdrawn 
for a moment. Her heart was full, and suddenly she 
turned upon Mr. Emerson, and said, "Mr. Emerson, I 
think you cannot know what a treasure you have in 
this friendship of my father. He loves you dearly and 
I fear you cannot appreciate what it is to have the love 
of such a man as my father." She says to this day she 
grows "pank," as the Scotchman said, all over at such 
presumption, but she could not help it. 

I asked what Mr. Emerson replied. He looked sur- 
prised, she said, and cast his eyes down, and then said 
earnestly that he knew and felt deeply how unworthy 
he was to enjoy the riches of such a friendship. 

This incident presented Mrs. Wister as well as Mr. 
Emerson under a keen light. They could never under- 
stand each other. 

From October, 1872, until the following May, Emer- 
son and his daughter Ellen were traveling abroad. On 
their return Mrs. Fields wrote in her journal : — 

Thursday, May 27, 1873. — The Nortons came home 
with the Emersons day before yesterday. Emerson 
came to pass an hour with J. T. F. before going to Con- 
cord. His son Edward had come down to meet him and 



104 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

was full of excitement over the reception his father was 
to receive and of which he was altogether ignorant. He 
was overjoyed to be on the old ground again and comes 
back to value the old friends even more than ever. He 
must have been much pleased by the joy testified in 
Concord, but we have only the newspaper account of 
that. He has been feted more than ever in England, and 
Ellen was rather worn out by the ovations; but her 
general health is much improved. The Nortons, who 
returned In the same steamer, tell me Miss Emerson 
was feted for her own sake and was his rival ! Her 
"American manners" became all the rage in that world 
of novelty. One night a gentleman sitting next her at 
dinner introduced the word "esthetic." She said she 
did not understand what he meant by that word ! 

On the voyage Emerson was devoted to his daughter 
and full of fun in all his talk with her. He would tuck 
her up in blanket shawls and go up and down, hither 
and yon, to make her comfortable — then he would 
laugh at her for being such an exacting young lady and 
would be very ironical about the manner in which she 
would allow him to wait on her. "And yet," he said, 
turning U) the Nortons, "Ellen is the torch of religion 
at ht)me." 

Throughout the journals Mrs. Fields's references to 
meetings of the Saturday Club, and the records of con- 
versations reported by her husband after these lively 
gatherings, are frequent. In one brief entry Parkman, 
Lowell, and Emerson appear in a conjunction that could 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 105 

hardly have been happy at the moment, but the con- 
cKidlng words of the passage may well stand, for their 
appreciation of Emerson, at the end of these pages con- 
cerned chiefly with him. 

August 26, 1874. — • • • Parkman said to Lowell, 
and a more strange evidence of lapse of tact could hardly 
be discovered, "Lowell, what did you mean by * the land 
of broken promise'?" Emerson, catching at this last, 
said, "What is this about the land of broken promise ?" 
clearly showing he had never read Lowell's Ode upon the 
death of Agassiz — whereat Lowell answered not at all, 
but dropped his eyes and silence succeeded, although 
Parkman made some kind of futile attempt to struggle 
out of it. Emerson said, "We have met two great losses 
in our Club since you were last here — Agassiz and 
Sumner." "Yes," said Lowell, "but a greater than 
either was that of a man I could never make you believe 
in as I did — Hawthorne." This ungracious speech 
silenced even Emerson, whose warm hospitality to the 
thought and speech of others is usually unending. 



In "Authors and Friends" Mrs. Fields concerned 
herself with Longfellow and Whittier at even greater 
length than with Holmes and Emerson. The Whit- 
tier paper, besides, was printed as a small separate vol- 
ume; and in Samuel T. Pickard's "Life of Whittier," 
as in Samuel Longfellow's biography of his brother, 
the letters from Whittier, as from Longfellow, to Mrs. 
Fields, and to her husband, bear witness to valued 



io6 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

intimacies. Neither to Whittier nor to Longfellow, 
therefore, does it seem desirable to devote a special 
section of these papers ; nor yet to L<iwcll, who never 
became the subject of published reminiscences by Mrs. 
Fields, perhaps for the very reason that he figures 

/>«' ^wf. ^*^^ fxy Px^/s^ 

^ Li/ J fl^^ jc::^: 

A<. L/^^^X t0 fair A^w- 

luicsiniiU of aulos^raph inscription on a pholop-aph of Rowse's 
crayon portrait of Ijowell given to Fields 

somewhat less frequently than the others in her jour- 
nal. Yet there are many allusions to him, and in addi- 
tion to the letters to Fields which Norton selected for 
his "Letters of James Russell Lowell," and Scudder 




JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
From the crayon portrait by Rowse in the Harvard College Library 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 107 

for his biography of Lowell, a surprising number 
of unprinted, characteristic communications, both to 
Fields and to his wife, testify to their friendship. The 
remainder of this chapter cannot be more profitably 
employed than by drawing from Mrs. Fields's journal 
passages relating to these and other local guests of 
the Charles Street house, and supplementing the diary 
especially with a few of Lowell's sprightly letters to 
his successor in the editorship of the "Atlantic 
Monthly." It may be remarked, as fairly indicative 
of the relations between Lowell and the Fieldses 
through many years, that when they visited England 
in 1869 their traveling companion was Lowell's daugh- 
ter Mabel. 

Here, to begin with, is a note written to accom- 
pany one of Lowell's most familiar poems, "After the 
Burial," when he sent the manuscript to the editor of 
the "Atlantic." Lowell's practice of shunning capitals 
at the beginning of his letters, except for the first 
personal pronoun, is observed m the quotations that 
follow : — 

Elmwood, 8M March^ 1868 

My dear Fields : — 

when I am in a financial crisis, which is on an average 
once in six weeks, I look first to my portfolio and then 
to you. The verses I send you are most of them more 
than of age, but Professors don't write poems, and I 
even begin to doubt if poets do — always. But I sup- 
pose you will pay me for my name as you do others, and 



io8 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

so I send the verses hoping you may also find something 
in them that is worth praise if not coin. Consolation 
and commonplace are twin sisters and I doubt not one 
sat at each ear of Eve after Cain's misunderstanding 
with his brother. In some folks they cause resentment, 
and this little burst relieved mine under some desper- 
ate solacings after the death of our first child, twenty- 
one years ago. I trust there is nothing too immediately 
personal to myself in the poem to make the publishing 
of it a breach of that confidence which a man should 
keep sacred with himself. 

With kind regards to Mrs. Fields, I remain always 
yours, 

J. R. FoWF.I.L 

Another typical letter, dated "Elmwood, 12th July, 
1868, M to 9 AM wind W. by N. Therm 88°," be- 
gins:— 

Mv DKAR Fields : — 

as I swelter here, it is some consolation for mc that 
you are roasting in that Yankee-baker which we call 
the \V" M". That repercussion of the sun's heat from 
so many angles at once (the focus being the tourist) al- 
ways struck me as one of the sublimest examples of the 
unvarying operation of natural laws. I wish you and 
Mrs. Fields might be made exceptions, but it can hardly 
be hoped. 

Before the end of the month Fields had escaj^d the 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 109 

perils of New Hampshire heat, and paid a visit to Ehn- 
wood, thus chronicled by Mrs. Fields : — 

July 25, 1868. — J. went out to see Lowell last night. 
As he passed Longfellow's door, "Trap," the dog, was 
half-asleep apparently on the lawn, but hearing a foot- 
step he leaped up and, seeing who it was, became over- 
joyed, leaped upon him and covered his hands with 
caresses. He stayed some time playing with him. Low- 
ell was alone in his library, looking into an empty fire- 
place and smoking a pipe. He has been in Newport for 
a week, but was delighted to return to find his "own 
sponge hanging on its nail" and to his books. He had 
become quite morbid because, while J. was away, a 
smaller sum than usual was sent him for his last poem. 
He thought it a delicate way of saying they wished to 
drop him. He was annoyed at the thought of having 
left out of his article on Dryden one of the finest points, 
he thought, that was making Dryden to appear the 
"Rubens" of literature, which he appears to him to be. 

Lowell is a man deeply pervaded with fine discontents. 
I do not believe the most favorable circumstances would 
improve him. Success, of which he has a very small 
share considering his deserts (for his books have a nar- 
row circulation), would make him gayer and happier; 
whether so wise a man, I cannot but doubt. 

He wears a chivalric, tender manner to his wife. 

In the following autumn. Bayard Taylor and his 
wife were paying a visit in Charles Street, and Lowell 



no MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

appears in Mrs. Fields's journal as one of the friends 
summoned in their honor. 



Thursday mor?nfigy November 19, 1868. — Mr. Parton 
came to breakfast and Dr. Holmes came in before we 
had quite done. O. W. H. was delighted to see Mr. P., 
because of his papers on "Smoking and Drinking." He 
believes smoking paralyzes the will. Taylor, on the con- 
trary, feels himself better for smoking; it subdues his 
physical energy so he can write; otherwise he is nervous 
to be up and away and his mind will not work. 

At dinner we had Lowell, Parton, Mr. ami Mrs. 
Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. Scott-Siddons and, later, Aldrich. 
Lowell talked most interestingly, head and shoulders 
beyond everybody else. The Siddonses left early, the 
gentlemen all smitten by her beauty and loveliness. A 
kind of chiKlish grace pervailed her and she was beau- 
tiful as a picture. I couKl not wonder at their delight. 
Lowell's talk after their departure was of literature, of 
course. He has been rcatling Calderon for the last six 
months, in the original. He finds him inexhaustible 
almost. Speaking of novels, he said Fielding was the 
master, although he considers there are but two perfect 
creations of individual character in all literature; these 
are FalstafT and Don Quixote; all the rest fell infinitely 
below — are imperfect and unworthy to stand by their 
side. Tom Jones he thought might come in, in the 
second rank, with many others, but far below. He said 
he could not tell his boys at Cambridge to read Tom 
Jones, for it might do them harm; but Fielding painted 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 



III 



his own experience and the result was unrivalled. 
Thackeray and the rest were pleasant reading, very 
pleasant, and yet how could he tell his class that he read 
Tom Jones once a year ! ^ He scouted the idea of Pick- 
wick or anybody else approaching his two great char- 
acters. They stood alone for all time. Rip Van Winkle 
was suggested, but he said in the first place that was not 
original. Few persons knew the story perhaps in the old 
Latin (he gave the name, but unhappily I have for- 
gotten it) but it was only a remade dish after all. 

Friday. ■ — Bayard Taylor and his wife left for New 
York. Mr. Parton dined out and we had a quiet eve- 
ning at home and went to bed early. (Parton thinks it 
would be possible to make the "Atlantic Monthly" far 
more popular. He suggests a writer named Mark Twain 
be engaged, and more articles connected with life than 
with literature.) 

It is easy to believe that Lowell's talk must have 
sounded much like his letters, which so often sound like 
talk. Witness the following sentences from a letter of 
December 21, 1868, in reply, apparently, to an appeal for 
a new essay for the "Atlantic" : — 

^ One of Lowell's reminiscences at the Saturday Club, recorded two years 
earlier by Mrs. Fields, suggests his essential youthfulness of spirit. Apropos 
of a story told by Dr. Holmes, "Lowell said that reminded him of experi- 
ments the boys at his school used to make on flies, to see how much weight 
they could carry. One day he attached a thread, which he pulled out of his 
silk handkerchief, to a fly's leg, and to the other end a bit of paper with 'the 
master is a fool' written on it in small distinct letters. The fly flew away and 
lighted on the master's nose ; but he, regardless of all but the lessons, brushed 
him off, and the fly rose with his burden to the ceiling." 



112 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Well, well, T am always astonished at the good nature 
of folks, and how much boring they will stand from au- 
thors. As I told Howells once, the day will come when 
a wiser generation will drive all its literary men into a 
corner and make a battue of the whole lot. However, 
"after me, the deluge," as Nero said, and I suppose 
they '11 stand another essay or two yet, if I can divine, 
or rather if I have absorbed enough of the general feel- 
ing about something to put a point on it. 

It *s a mercy I 'm not conceited ! I should like to be, 
and try to be, and have fizzes of it now and then, but 
they soon go out and leave a/o^o behind them I don't 
like. But if I only were for a continuance I should be 
as grand a bore as ever lived — as grand as Wordsworth, 
by Jove ! I would come into town once a week to read 
you over one of my old poems (selecting the longest, of 
course), and point out its beauties to you. You would 
flee to Tierra del Fuego (ominous name !) to escape me. 
You would give up publishing. You would write an epic 
and read a book just to 77ie every time I came. But no, it 
is too bright a dream. Let me [be] satisfied with my class, 
who have to hear me once a week, and with just enough 
conceit to read my lectures as if I had not stolen *em, 
as I am apt to do now. Look out for an essay that shall 
Imake] Montaigne and Bacon cross as the devil — 
when they come to read it ! It will come ere you think. 
Yours ever, 

Fabius C. Lowell 

A few weeks later Lowell was writing arjain to Fields, 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 113 

on January 12, 1869, about a fiftieth birthday party at 
Elmwood : — 

I am going to celebrate my golden wedding with Life, 
on the 22nd of next month, by a dinner or a supper or 
something of the kind, and I want you to jine. I shall 
get together a dozen or so of old friends, and it will be a 
great satisfaction for you and me to see how much grayer 
the rest of 'em are than we. I shall fit my invitations to 
this end, and the bald and hoary will have the chance 
of the lame, the halt, and the blind in the parable. If 
it should be a dinner, it won't matter, but if a supper, be 
sure and forget your night-key and then you won't have 
any anxiety, nor Mrs. Fields either. Of course, I shall 
have an account of the affair in the papers with a list of 
the gifts (especially in money) and the names of all who 
donate. You will understand by what I have said that it 
is to be one of those delightful things they call a "sur- 
prise party," and I expect to live on it for a year — one 
friend for every month. 

A week later, in the course of a letter accepting the 
invitation of Mr. and Mrs. Fields for Lowell's daughter 
to accompany them to Europe, he wrote: "Do you see 
that is to commence his autobiography in 'Put- 
nam's Magazine ' ? At least, I take it for granted from 
the title — The Ass in Life and Literature ? If sincerely 
done, it will be interesting." 

For all the transcendentalism of the circle to which 
Mrs. Fields bore so intimate a relation, there emanated 



114 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

from Lowell and others an atmosphere of sincerity which 
helped to preserve the equilibrium of the more easily 
swayed. Mrs. Fields herself was not immune to the 
appeal of some of the "isms" of the time and place, but 
an entry in her journal for January i8, 1870, shows her 
in no great peril of being swept away by them : — 

Attended yesterday a meeting of what is called the 
Radical Club. Mr. Channing spoke, Mr. Higginson, 
Wendell Phillips, Mrs. Howe, Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mr. 
Bartol, Wasson, J. F. Clarke, Edna Cheney. Mr. Whit- 
tier was present and a room full of "come-outers." Mr. 
Channing and Mr. Phillips were reverent, though I 
think Mr. Phillips more definite, and perhaps conse- 
quently more conservative, in what he said. Certainly 
Mr. Phillips's speech was highly satisfactory. On the 
whole there was much vague talk and restless expression 
of self without any high end being furthered. I thought 
much of Mr. Higginson's talk and Mr. Wasson's irrev- 
erent answer were untrue. Perhaps I am wrong in say- 
ing no good end is attained by such a meeting. Perhaps 
a closer understanding of what we do believe is the re- 
sult. But there is much unpleasant in the unnatural and 
excited view of the inside ring.' 

There was, moreover, a constant corrective at hand 
in the persons of the local wits, among whom Long- 

* After an evening of high discussion at Mrs. Howe's in an cirlicr year, 
Mrs. F'iclds wrote in her journal (October 4, 1863) : "The talk grew deep, 
and after it was over, she (Mrs. Howe] recalled the saying of Mrs. Bell, 
after a like evening, when she called for 'a fat idiot.'" 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 115 

fellow's brother-in-law, Thomas Gold ("Tom") Apple- 
ton, was of the most clear-sighted. His definition of 
Nahant as "cold roast Boston," and his prescription 
for tempering the gales on a particularly windy Boston 
corner by tethering a shorn lamb there, have secured 
him something more than a local survival. He fre- 
quently left his mark on the pages of Mrs. Fields's 
diary — once venturing seriously into prophecy on 
the spiritual future of Boston, in terms which will seem, 
at least, in partibus infidelium, to have received a cer- 
tain confirmation at the hands of time. In the diary 
the following entry is found : — 

Sunday^ November 6, 1870. — Appleton (Tom, as the 
world calls him) came in soon after breakfast Sunday 
morning. He talked very wisely and brilliantly upon 
Art, its value and purpose to the state, the necessity 
for the Museum. He said our people were far more lit- 
erary than artistic. The sensuous side of their nature 
was undeveloped. The richness of color, the glory of 
form, was less to them than something which could set 
the sharp edge of their intellect in motion. "Besides, 
what is Boston going to do," he said, "when these fel- 
lows die who give it its honor now, Longfellow, Holmes, 
and the rest ? They can't live forever, and with them 
its glory will depart without it is sustained by a founda- 
tion for art in other directions. Harvard University will 
do something to keep it up, but not much, and unless a 
distinct effort be made now, Boston will lose its place 
and go behind." He became much excited by the lack 



ii6 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

of appreciation for William Story in Boston, and the 
abuse of the Everett statue, which he considers good 
in its way and as marking the highest point in Everett's 
oratorical fame, that is, when he lifted his hand to 
indicate the stars in his address at Albany, and set his 
fame some points nearer the luminaries which inspired 
him, by his fine eloquence. 

He said a merchant told him one day that he did n't 
like Story's portrait statues, but his ideal work he was 
delighted with. "You lie !" I said to him. "The beauti- 
ful Shepherd-Boy which I helped to buy and bring to 
Boston you know nothing of — you can't tell me now 
in which corner of the Public Library it is hidden away. 
I tell you, you lie!" 

He spoke of the Saturday Club, and said that, al- 
though he s(imetimes smiled at Holmes's enthusiasm 
over it, he believed in the main he was quite right, and 
it would be remembered in future as Johnson's Club has 
been, and recorded and talked of in the same way. 

Unfortunately I don't see their Boswell. I wish I could 
believe there was a single chicl amang them takin' notes.' 

On December I4, 1870, the diary recorded a dinner 
at which Longfellow, Osgood, Aldrich, Holmes, Dana, 
Howells, Lowell, and Bayard Taylor were the guests. 
It celebrated the completion of Taylor's translation of 
" Faust." Of the talk of Lowell and Longfellow, Mrs. 
Fields wrote : — 

' If Mrs. Fields had lived to sec The Early Yean of the Saturday Cluh 
(Boston, KyiS), she would have found that I drew from the notes in her own 
diary a large portion of the memoir of James T. Fields which it contains. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 117 

Before dinner I found opportunity for a short talk 
with Lowell upon literature. He thinks the chief value 
of Bret Harte is his local color and it would be a fatal 
mistake for him to come East, in spite of Taylor's rep- 
resentation of the aridity of intellectual life now in 
California. Taylor finds the same reason for leaving his 
native place. He regrets his large house, and frankly 
says he is tired of living there, tired of living alone, there 
being really no one in the vicinity with whom he can 
associate as on equal grounds. There is no culture, not 
even a love for it, in the neighborhood. 

But I have not said half enough of Longfellow. He 
scintillated all the evening, was filled with the spirit of 
the time and the scene, sweetly reprimanded Taylor 
for not having time to give him a visit also, darted his 
jcux d' esprit rapidly right and left, often setting the 
table in a roar, a most unusual thing with him. Holmes 
at the other end was talking about the natural philos- 
ophers who "invented facts." Lowell took exception, 
said it was an impossible juxtaposition of ideas and 
words. Holmes defended himself by quoting (I think 
the name was Carius ; whoever it was, Lowell said at 
once and rather warningly, he is a very distinguished 
name) a series of created facts by which he said a 
woman was not articulated or not as a man is (perhaps 
I have not his exact ideas) ; whereat Longfellow at once 
held up the inarticulate woman to the amusement of 
the table. Then they began to talk of the singular per- 
sons this world contains, "quite as strange as Dickens," 
as they always say; and Taylor, who introduced the 



ii8 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

subject, proceeded to relate an incident which happened 
to him in a cheap coffee house in New York. It was 
near a railway station, so he dropped in, finding it con- 
venient so to do, at an hour not usually popular with 
the frequenters of such establishments. It was empty 
save for an extraordinary figure with long arms, short 
legs and misshapen body, who, hearing a glass of ale 
ordered, came forward and said if he pleased he would 
like to have his ale at the same table for the sake of 
company. There was nothing to do but to comply, 
which Taylor of course did, whereupon the strange 
creature, never asking who Taylor was, went on to 
relate that he was the great man-monkey of the world 
who could hang from a tree and eat nuts and make the 
true noise in the throat better than any other; he had 
no competitor except one of the Ravel brothers, but 
he (Ravel) was not the real thing; he himself alone 
could make the noise perfectly. . . . 

They all drank the exquisite Ehrbacher Rhine wine 
from tall green German glasses of antique form, which 
delighted them greatly. Jamie was much entertained by 
Holmes's finding them "good conversational aperient, 
but ugly. I should always have them on the table, but 
they are not handsome." I^ngfellow was delighted with 
my Venetian lace bodice; it seemed to have a flavor of 
Venice about it in his eyes. It was a real pleasure to 
me to see his appreciation of a thing Jamie and I really 
enjoy so much. 

I have not reported all, by any means, but time fails 
me now. A thought of Dickens was continually present. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 119 

as it must be forever at a company dinner-table. How- 
many beautiful feasts have I enjoyed by his side ! 
There is none like him, none. 

Taylor wrote a friendly German inscription in his 
book and presented me after dinner. 

There were amusing traits of Elizabeth Peabody 
given. Longfellow remembered that the first time he 
met her was in a carriage. She was taken up in the 
dark. Hearing his name mentioned, she leaned forward 
and said, "Mr. Longfellow, can you tell me which is 
the best Chinese Grammar ? " 

A midsummer entry of the same year suggests the 
part that an editor's wife may play in the successful 
conduct of a magazine, if only through sharing the en- 
thusiasm that attends the first reading of a manuscript 
of distinguished merit. 

Saturday, July 16, 1870. — A perfect summer day. 
Jamie did not go to town, but with a bag full of letters 
and MSS. concluded to remain here. He fell first upon 
a MS. by Henry James, Jr., a short story called "Com- 
pagnons de Voyage," and after tasting of it in our room 
and finding the quality good (though the handwriting 
was execrable), I invited my dear boy to a favorite 
nook in the pasture where we could hear the sea and 
catch a distant gleam of its blue face while we were still 
in shadow and fanned by oak leaves. It was one of 
those delicious seasons which summer can bring to the 
dullest heart, I believe and hope. We lay down with 



I20 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

our feet plunged into the cool delicious grass, while I 
read the pleasant tale of Italy to the close. I do not 
know why success in work should affect us so power- 
fully, but I could have wept as I finished reading, not 
from the sweet low pathos of the tale, which was not 
tearful, but from the knowledge of the writer's success. 
It is so difficult to do anything well in this mysterious 
world. 

On the very next day Lowell wrote Fields a letter 
which must have been read with delight by such friends 
of Dickens as the Fieldses. The decorated sonnet which 
filled its third sheet is reproduced herewith in facsimile: 
the plainness of Lowell's script renders type superflu- 
ous. The mere fact that the death of Dickens could 
have called forth clerical expressions provoking Lowell 
to such scorn is in itself a measure of the distance we 
have travelled since 1870. The verses are not included 
in Lowell's "Poetical Works," nor are they listed in the 
"Hibliography of James Russell Lowell," compiled by 
George Willis Cooke. With two slight changes they 
may be found, however, over Lowell's signature, in 
"Every Saturday," for August 6, 1870. 

Ei-Mwoon, 17M July, iS-jo 

My dear Fields : — 

I can stand it no longer ! If Dickens is to be banned, 
the rest of us might as well fling up our hands. This 
hot weather, too, gives a foretaste that raises well- 
founded apprehension. It is a good primary school for 



ll/n ^^ fc^ ^^^^ (f ^^^ ^ flc^ a^ K^ ^ 



i 







P 




Facsimile of Lowell's " Bulldog and Terrier" sonnet 



122 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

the Institution of which the Rev'ds Fulton and Dunn 
seem to be ushers. Instead of going to Church today, 
where I might have heard something not wholly to my 
advantage, as the advertisements for lost people say, 
I have written a sermon. It is not a proper sonnet, but 
a cross between that and epigram — a kind of bull-ter- 
rier, in short, with the size of the one and the prick-ears 
and docked tail of the other, nor without his special tal- 
ent for rats. Is there any grip in his jaw or no ? He is 
good-natured and scarce shows his teeth. 

The thing is an improvisation and the weather aw- 
fully hot ! 

Sweltered your servant sits and sweats and swears : 
(for alliteration only) but if you would like it for the 
"Atlantic," why here it is on the next leaf. Or, if too 
late, why not "Every Saturday"? I could not even 
think of it sooner, for I have been wrestling with a bad 
head and an article on Chaucer, and I fear they have 
thrown me. I want rest, and a bath of poetry, but where 
may the wicked hope for either? My sonnet (if Leigh 
Hunt would let me call it so) hit me like a stray shot 
from ncnvhere that I could divine, and five minutes saw 
it finished. So why may it not be good ? It came, any- 
how, as a poem comes — though it is n't just that. But 
my dog is n't bad ? He is from the life at any rate. 

I shall make use of my first leisure to get into Boston. 
Hut I have got bedevilled with the text of Chaucer and 
am working on it with my usual phrenzy — thirteen 
hours, for example, yesterday, collating texts and writ- 
ing into margins, I comfort myself that my Chaucer 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 123 

will bring a handsome price at my vmidoo ! I shall be 
easier in my coffin if it run up handsomely for Fanny 
and Mabel. 

Do you want an essay for your "Almanac" if one 
should come, which is doubtful ? I need one or two 
more to make a little volume, and I need a little volume 
for nameless reasons. O, if I could sell my land I I 
would transmute that gold into poetry. Or if only 
poems would come when you whistle for 'em ! 

Give my kindest regards to Mrs Fields. 
Yours always, 

J. R. L. 

From my study, this first day for three weeks without 
a drowsy pain in my knowledge box, I really feel a little 
lively, and wonder at myself. But don't be alarmed — 
it won't last, any more than money does, or principle 
in a poHtician, or hair, or popular favor — or paper. 

Lowell and Longfellow continue to make their appear- 
ances in Mrs. Fields's diary. 

December 7, 1871. — Last Sunday Charlotte Cush- 
man dined here. Our guests asked to meet her were 
Mr. and Mrs. Lowell and Mr. Longfellow; Miss Steb- 
bins and Miss Chapman, her guests, also came. We 
had a lovely social time, Lowell making himself espe- 
cially interesting, as he always does when he can once 
work himself up to the pitch of going out at all. He 
talked a while with me about poetry and his own topics 
after dinner. He said he was one of the few people who 



124 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

believed in absolute truth; that he always looked for 
certain qualities in writers, which if he could not dis- 
cover, they no longer interested him and he did not 
care to read them. He discovered, for instance, in the 
writers who had survived the centuries the same kin- 
dred points, those points he studied until he discovered 
what the adamant was and where it was founded; then 
he would look into the writers of our own age to see if 
he could find the same stuff; there was little enough 
of it unfortunately. He does not like Reynolds's por- 
trait of Johnson, thought it untrue, far too handsome, 
yet highly characteristic in the management of the 
hands, which portray the man as he was when talking 
better probably than anything ever did. Mrs. Lowell 
appeared to enjoy herself. J. says L. is always more 
himself if Mrs. L. is happy and talkative. They are 
thinking of Europe. Mabel is to be married in April, 
and afterward they probably go at once to Europe. 

A small party of friends assembled in the evening. 
Longfellow was the beloved and observed and wor- 
shlppctl among all. 

ylpril 1 1, 1872. — Last night Jamie dined with Long- 
fellow. John Field of Pennsylvania and Lowell were the 
two other guests. J. was there twenty minutes before 
the rest arrived, and Longfellow gave him an account of 

the wedding of a school-mate of mine, , an 

excellent generous-hearted, generously built woman, 
with a little limping old clergyman who has already had 

three wives and whose first name is . Longfellow 

said, in memory of what had gone before, the organist. 




HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
From a photograph taken in middle life 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 125 

as if driven by some evil spirit, played "Auld Lang 
Syne," as the wedding procession came in, consisting of 
the bride and her brother, two very well-made large 
persons and the elderly bridegroom limping on behind 
all alone. The organist suddenly stopped at this point, 
breaking off with a queer little quirk and shiver as if 
he only then discovered what he was doing. Indeed 
the whole wedding appeared to have points to affect 
the risibles of the poet. He could hardly speak of it 
without laughter. He said, moreover, that it was, he 
thought, disgusting and outrageous for old men to get 
married. 

Tuesday, September 23, 1872. — Longfellow came to 
town to see Jamie, in one of his loveliest moods. The 
day was so warm and fine, such a day of dreams, that he 
proposed to him every kind of excursion. "Come," he 
said, "let us go to the tea stores and smell the tea; the 
warm atmosphere will bring out all the odors and we can 
get samples!" And again, "Come, let us go to the 
wharves and see the vessels just in from Italy or Spain. 
It will be a lovely sight in this soft sky, and we can hear 
the men speak in their native tongues." Unhappily all 
these seductions were in vain, for Jamie was busy and 
was to lecture in Grantville in the evening. L. said : 
"At half-past eight I shall think of you doing thus and 
thus" (sawing the air with his arms). L. continued: 
"You know I have very strange people come to me — a 
man came a day or two ago by the name of Hyers, who 
has just published a book describing his own career. 
He believes that he is fed by the Lord ! *How do you 



126 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

mean?' asked I, with the knowledge that we "were all 
fed in the same way. 'Why,' said H., 'He leaves pies 
and peanuts on the sidewalks for w^. '" Longfellow could 
hardly contain himself — but "after all," he said, "that 
is very like Greene : when Greene comes to me, he always 
takes his money to come and go, just like my own sons 
and without so much as a thank you. But I like to have 
Greene come because he enjoys it so much and it is so 
strange. He amuses me. Then Appleton too, with his 
odd fancies, it would be hard to find a stranger man than 
he. He amused me immensely the other day by fancy- 
ing an Indian, 'Great Fire,' or 'Hole in the Wall,' or 
some such fellow, coming to Boston for the first time. 
Passing a perruquier's, he sees the window filled with 
masses of false hair; taking them to be scalps and the 
window to be an exhibition of these tokens of prowess, 
he rushes in, embraces the little pcrruquier behind the 
counter, treats him like a brother, and almost frightens 
the small hairdresser out of his senses ! !" 

L. likes Joaquin [Miller] much. Of course, he said, 
there are some things about him not altogether agree- 
able, such as flinging a quid of tobacco out of his mouth 
under the table; "but I don't mind those things; per- 
haps," he added, "perhaps I might have done the same 
as a youth of 20! ! !" 

Thursday y June i 2, 1873. — Dined last night with the 
Aldriches and Mr. Bugbce at Mr. Lowell's beautiful old 
Elm wood. ^ It was a perfect night, cool, fresh, moon- 

' This was in the midst of Aldrich's occupancy of PMmwood, (Juring Lowell's 
two years' absence in Europe. 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 127 

lighted, after a muggy day of heat. After dinner I went 
into the fine old study with Aldrich, where he showed me 
two or three Httle poems he has lately written. He was 
all ready to talk on literary topics and much in earnest 
about his own satisfaction over "Miss Mehitable's Son" 
(which is indeed a very good story), and was full of dis- 
gust over the " Nation's " cool dismissal of it. It was too 
bad; but that Dennet of the "Nation" is beneath con- 
tempt because of the slights he throws upon good liter- 
ary work. Aldrich says he found "Asphodel" all worn 
to pieces, read and reread in the upstairs study. He 
finds Mr. Lowell's library in curious disorder with re- 
spect to modern books. He is an easy lender and an 
easy borrower. The result is, everything is at loose ends. 
Only two volumes of Hawthorne can be found, for in- 
stance. . . . 

Such wonderful colors overspread our bay this eve- 
ning, the wide heavens, and all that lay between. It 
seemed an unreal and magic glory, and I recall dimly 
Hawthorne's disgust when he endeavored to describe 
a landscape. The Lord, he says, expressed himself in 
this glory; how shall we therefore interpret into lan- 
guage when he himself has taken this form of speech as 
the only adequate expression to convey his meaning to 
us ? Who does not feel this in looking at the glories of 
Nature in this perfect season ? 

And here is a final glimpse of Longfellow, at Man- 
chester-by-the-Sea, shortly after Don Pedro of Brazil 
had visited him in Cambridge: — 



128 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Thursday y July 6, 1876. — A fine rushing wind — no 
rain, but a wind that seemed to tear everything up by 
the roots. I dared not venture out in the morning. To 
our surprise and delight Mr. Longfellow came to dine. 
He was pleased to find Anna here, and fell to talking of 
Heidelberg in German with her and quoting the poets 
most delightfully. We sat in the front hall and rejoiced 
over his presence as he talked, for he was in a fine talk- 
ing mood. He told us of the Emperor's visit and of his 
soldierly though most simple bearing ; how he came to 
call upon him after his dinner, and when, as he rose to 
go, Longfellow said, "Your Majesty, I thank you for 
the honor you have done me." He said, "Ah ! no, Long- 
fellow, none of your nonsense, let us be friends together. 
I hope you will write to me. I will write you first and 
you must promise to answer." As they walked down the 
garden path together, Longfellow raised his hat and 
stepped one side as he was about to get into his car- 
riage. "No, no," he said laughingly, "there you are 
at it again." In short, he has left a pleasant memory 
behind. 

Longfellow told us his maids broke everything he 
possessed; at last they had broken a very beautiful 
Japanese vase or bowl which Charley brought home — 
so he had made a Latin epitaph for the maid. Unhap- 
pily I recall only the last line : — 

Nihil letigit quod non Jre^it. 

He described Blumenbach very amusingly, whose 
lectures on Natural History he attended as a youth in 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 129 

Heidelberg. He descended from his desk one day and 
came and rested his hand on the rail just before which L. 
was seated. He had been speaking of Platonic love. 
"Und die Platonische Liebe ist nach Amerika gegan- 
gen," he said, looking at Longfellow. The whole stu- 
dent audience roared and applauded. 

He was in the loveliest spirits and manners. His 
friendly ways to my three friendless girls were not only 
such as to excite them profoundly, but there was sin- 
cere feeling in his invitation to them to call upon him 
and in his questions in their behalf. 

The wind subsided as we sat together ; the two young 
Bigelows sang "Maid of Athens" and one or two other 
songs, and then he departed. How sorry we were as we 
watched his retreating figure, as he and dear J. wound 
down the hill in the little phaeton. 

Mrs. Fields's gallery of friends would be incomplete 
without a single sketch of Whit tier's familiar outline. 
Out of many which the diaries contain, one may best 
be taken, for it shows him in company with that other 
friend, Celia Thaxter, whom also Mrs. Fields counted 
among the few to whose memory she devoted special 
chapters in her "Authors and Friends"; and it brings 
the three together at Mrs. Thaxter's native Isles of 
Shoals, so long a mecca of the "like-minded." 

July 12, 1873. — I shall not soon forget our talk one 
afternoon in the parlor at "The Shoals." Whittier, as if 
inspired by that spirit residing in us which is the very 



ijo MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

ground-work of the Quaker belief, began to speak of 
Emerson's faith and of the pain it gave him to see the 
name of Jesus placed in his writings as but one among 
many. When he discoursed with Emerson of these 
things, he could have no satisfaction. Celia, on the other 

From a note oj "Dear If'httticr " to Mrs. I'icUs 

hand, said she did not understand these things ; she 
never prayed. "I am sure thee does without knowing 
it," said W. ; "else what do thy poems mean ? Thee has 
not set prayer perhaps, but some kind of a prayer thee 
must have. No human being can exist without it. But 
what troubles me also in Emerson is that I can find no 
real faith in immortality." Here I took up the question. 
I had heard Mr. Emerson at Thoreau's grave, after- 
ward speaking expressly on immortality, and in both 
discourses I felt deeply his faith in our future progress 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 131 

and enduring life. Whittier was inclined to think me 
mistaken. I think too that his use of Jesus' name is to 
prevent the worship of him instead of the One God. 
Whittier asked Celia to read a discourse of Emerson's, 
which she did aloud ; and again he spoke of the beauty 
of childlike worship, the necessity for it in our natures, 
and quoted some lovely hymns. His whole heart was 
alive and poured out toward us as if he longed tenderly 
like the prophet of old to breathe a new life into us. I 
could seem to see that he reproached himself that so 
many days had passed without his trying to speak more 
seri6usly. He was not perfectly well after this — a 
headache overtook him before our talk was over and 
did not leave him until he found himself in Amesbury 
again. I trust it did so there. . . . 

Whittier said one day, when we were talking of the 
"Life of Charlotte Bronte" by Mrs. Gaskell, and I was 
saying how sad it was she should have made the old man, 
her father, suffer unto death, as she did, by telling the 
tale of his bad son's life, and "still worse," I said, "she 
came out in the Athenaeum and declared that her story 
was false, when she knew it was true, hoping to comfort 
the old man," — "I don't know," said Whittier; "I 
am inclined to think that was the best part of it, if her 
lie would have done the old man any good !" 

After we had our long afternoon session of talk over 
Emerson and future existence and the unknowable, 
Celia stood up and stretched herself and said, "How 
good it has been with the little song-sparrow putting in 
his oar above it all!" 



132 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

And what of Mrs. Fields herself, a woman of nearly 
forty when this last passage was written ? For the most 
part the diary reveals her but indirectly. Yet in the 
midst of all her pictures of her friends, a fragment of 
self-portraiture is occasionally found; and to one of 
them the reader of these pages is entitled. 




cc<n-£^ 






■i^nf^^^ 



^- 



-o 



Proposed Dedication of H'hitlier's " .imoiig ihe Hills" to Afrs. Fields. 

In a letter to Mrs. Fields, IVhittier wrote: " I would like ihy judgment 

about it. It 'ould this do?'* In altered form it appears in the book. 



December i8, 1873. — Have been looking over "VVil- 
hclm Mcister"! I struck upon that marvellous pas- 
sage, " I reverence the individual who understands dis- 
tinctly what he wishes ; who un weariedly advances ; who 
knows the means conducive to his object, and can seize 
and use them. How far his object may be great or 
little is the next consideration with me"; and much 



CONCORD AND CAMBRIDGE 133 

more quite as good to the same end. It prompts me 
to say what I wish to do in life. 

Aristotle writes : "Virtue is concerned with action, art 
with production." The problem of life is how to harmon- 
ize the two — either career must he.come prominent accord- 
ing to the nature of the individual. I discern in myself: 
1st, the desire to serve others unselfishly according to the 
example of our dear Lord ; 2nd, the desire to cultivate 
my powers in order to achieve the highest life possible 
to me as an individual existence by stimulating thought 
to its finest issues through reflection, observation, and by 
profound and ceaseless study of the written thoughts of 
the wisest in every age and every clime. 

To fulfil these aims we must be able to answer the 
simple question promptly to ourselves: "What then 
shall I do tomorrow and today?" Then, the decision 
being made, the thing alone must have all the earnest- 
ness put into it of a creature who knows that the next 
moment he may be called to his account. 

As a woman and a wife' my first duty lies at home; 
to make that beautiful ; to stimulate the lives of others 
by exchange of ideas, and the repose pf domestic life ; 
to educate children and servants. 

2nd, To be conversant with the very poor; to visit 
their homes ; to be keenly alive to their sufferings ; 
never allowing the thought of their necessities to sleep 
in our hearts. 

3rd, By day and night, morning and evening. In 
all times and seasons when strength is left to us, to 
study, study, study. 



134 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Because I have put this last, it does not stand last 
in Importance; but to put it first and write out the plan 
for study which my mind naturally selects would be to 
ignore that example of perfect life in which I humbly 
believe, and to return to the lives of the ancients, so fine 
in their results to the few, so costly to the many. But 
in the removed periods of existence, when solitude may 
be our blessed portion, what a joy to fly to communion 
with the sages and live and love with them ! 

I have written this out for the pleasure of seeing 
if "I distinctly understand what I wish." It is a wide 
plan, too wide, I fear, for much performance, but there- 
fore pcrhap«; m(jrc conducive to a constant faith. 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA' 

When Mrs. Fields wrote the "Personal Recollec- 
tions" of Oliver Wendell Holmes which appear in her 
"Authors and Friends," she quoted, with a few changes 
prompted by modesty, this passage from a letter re- 
ceived from him at Christmas, 1881 : "Except a few of 
my immediate family connections, no friends have seen 
me so often as a guest as did you and your husband. 
Under your roof I have met more visitors to be remem- 
bered than under any other. But for your hospitality 
I should never have had the privilege of personal ac- 
quaintance with famous writers and artists whom I 
can now recall as I saw them, talked with them, heard 
them in that pleasant library, that most lively and 
agreeable dining-room. How could it be otherwise with 
such guests as he entertained with his own unflagging 
vivacity and his admirable social gifts ?" 

One of the visitors thus encountered by Dr. Holmes 
was Charles Dickens. Here was a guest after the host's 
own heart — and the hostess's. The host stood alone 
among publishers as a friend of the authors with whom 
it was his business to deal. Out of them all there was 
none with whom he came to stand on terms of closer 
sympathy and friendship than with Dickens. They had 

^ The greater part of this chapter appeared in Harper's Magazine for May 
and June, 1922. 



1 16 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 



first met when Dickens came to America in 1842, and 
Fields was by no means the conspicuous figure he was 
to become. When he visited Europe in 1859-60, with 
his young wife, whose personality was to contribute its 
own beauty and charm to the hospitality of I48 Charles 
Street for many years to come, they dined with Dickens 
in London, visited him at Gad's Hill, and had much dis- 
cussion of a plan, which Fields had been urging upon 
him in correspondence, for Dickens to come to America 
for a course of readings. As early as in one of the letters 
of this time, Dickens wrote to Fields: "Here I forever 
renounce 'Mr.' as having anything whatever to do with 
our communication, and as being a mere preposterous 
interloper." From such beginnings grew the intimacy 
which caused Dickens, when he drew up the humorous 
terms of a walking-match between Dolby, his manager, 
and Osgood, Fields's partner, while the Boston readings 
of 1868 were in progress, to define Fields as "Massa- 
chusetts Jemmy" and himself as the "Gad's Hill 
Gasper" by virtue of his "surprising performances 
(without the least variation) on that true national in- 
strument, the American catarrh." 

The visits of Dickens to America, first in 1842, then 
in the winter of 1867-68, have been the subject of abun- 
dant chronicle. For the first of them thtre is the direct 
record of his "American Notes," besides those indirect 
reflections in "Martin Chuzzlewit," which wrought an 
efl^ect described by Carlylc in the characteristic saying 
that "all Yankee-doodledom blazed up like one uni- 
versal soda bottle." Many memorials of the second 




CHARLES DICKENS 



From a portrait by Francis Alexander, for many years in the Fields house, 
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 137 

visit are preserved in Fields's "Yesterdays with 
Authors," and in John Forster's "Life" both visits are 
of course recorded. 

There is, besides, one source of intimate record of 
Dickens in America which hitherto has remained almost 
untouched.^ This is found in the diaries of Mrs. Fields, 
filled, as the preceding pages have shown, not merely 
with her own sympathetic observations, but with many 
things reported to her by her husband. To him it was 
largely due that Dickens crossed the Atlantic near the 
end of 1867. Landing in Boston, and soon beginning 
his extraordinarily popular readings, he found in the 
Charles Street house of the Fieldses a second home. 
"Steadily refusing all invitations to go out during the 
weeks he was reading," wrote Fields in his "Yesterdays 
with Authors," " he went only into one other house be- 
sides the Parker, habitually, during his stay in Boston." 
In that house Mrs. Fields wrote the diaries from which 
the following passages are taken. There Dickens was 
not merely a warmly welcomed friend and guest at 
dinner, but for a time an inmate. Henry James, sum- 
moning after Mrs. Fields's death his remembrances of 
her and of her abode, found in it "certain fine vibra- 
tions and dying echoes" of all the episode of Dickens's 
second visit. "I liked to think of the house," he wrote, 
"I couldn't do without thinking of it, as the great 
man's safest harborage through the tremendous gale 

* A few passages from it, relating to Dickens, are included in James T. 
Fields: Biographical Notes and Personal Sketches. When they are occa- 
sionally repeated here, it is in their original form, and not as Mrs. Fields 
edited them for publication. 



138 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

of those even more leave-taking appearances, as fate 
was to appoint, than we then understood." 

In Dickens's state of physical health while the 
Fieldses were thus seeing him, lay the only token of an 
end not far off. All else was gayety and delight. The 
uncontrollable laughter — where does one hear quite 
parallel notes to-day? — - the simplicities of game and 
anecdote, the enthusiastic yielding of complete admira- 
tion, the glimpses of august figures of an earlier time 
— all these serve equally to take one back over more 
than half a century, into a state of society about which 
an element of myth begins to form, and to bring out of 
tliut past the living, human figure of Dickens himself. 

For the most part these extracts from the diaries 
call for no explanations. 

Several months before the great visitor's arrival his 
coming was heralded by his business agent, of whom 
Mrs. Fields wrote : — 

August I4, 1867. — Mr. Dolby arrived today from 
England (Mr. Dickens's agent), a good, healthy, kindly 
natured man of whom Dickens seems really fond, hav- 
ing followed him to the steamer in Liverpool from Lon- 
don to see that all things were comfortably arranged 
for him. He says Dickens has lamed one of his feet 
with too much walking of late. He is here to arrange for 
100 nights, for which he hears he may receive ^200,000; 
the readings to begin the first of December and to be 
chiefly given in New York City. 

August 15, 1867. — Our day was quiet enough, but 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 139 

when J. came down, he held us quite spellbound and 
magnetized all the evening with his account of Dickens, 
which Mr. Dolby had given him. He says Dolby him- 
self is a queer creature when he talks. He has a stutter 
which leads him to become suddenly stately in the 
middle of a homely phrase and to give a queer intona- 
tion to his voice, so that he did not dare look at Osgood 
(who was a listener also) lest they should both explode 
with laughter. 

Dickens now has five dogs ; for these the cook pre- 
pares daily five plates of dinner. One day the plates 
were all ready when a small pup stole in and polished 
off the five plates. He fainted away immediately, and in 
this condition was discovered by the cook, who put 
him under the pump and revived him ; but he had been 
going about looking like the figure 8 ever since. 

Dickens is a warm friend of Fechter. One day, return- 
ing from a reading tour, his man met him at the sta- 
tion saying, "The fifty-eight boxes have come, sir." 
"What?" said Mr. Dickens. "The fifty-eight boxes 
have come, sir." "I know nothing of fifty-eight boxes," 
said the other. "Well, sir," said the man, "they are 
all piled up outside the gate and we shall soon see, sir." 
They proved to be a Swiss chalet complete, handles, 
blinds, not a bit wanting, which Fechter had sent him. 
It is put up in a grove near the house, where it presents 
a very picturesque effect. 

Dickens allows nothing to escape his attention and 
gives "one small corner of the white of one eye" to 
his household concerns, though he seems not to observe. 



I40 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

His daughter Mary has the governance of the servants, 
Miss Hogarth of the cellar and provisions. There is a 
system in everything with which he has to do. When 
he gives a reading, he is present in the hall at half-past 
six, although the reading does not begin until eight ; for 
Dickens cannot go about as other people do, he must go 
when the people do not press upon him. On reaching 
the private room, his servant brings his evening dress, 
reading desk, screen, lamps, when he arranges the hall, 
examines the copper gas-tubes to see if in order, dresses 
himself and is ready to begin. In Liverpool the other 
night he had advertised to read "Sergeant Buzfuz," 
instead of which by accident he read "Bleak House." 
Mr. Dolby spoke to him as soon as he had finished, 
telling him the mistake he had made. He at once re- 
turned to the desk, and said, "My friends, it is half- 
past ten o'clock and you see how tired I am, but I will 
still read Sergeant Buzfuz's speech if you expect it." 
"No, no," the crowd shouted; "you 're tired. No, no, 
this ought to do for tonight." One tall man raised himself 
up in the gallery and said, "Look here, we came to hear 
Pickwick and we ought tohef it." "Very well, my friend," 
replied Dickens, immediately, "I will read Sergeant 
Buzfuz for your accommodation solely" ; and thereat he 
did read it to a breathless and delighted audience. 

At length came Dickens himself, am.! the diary takes 
up the tale ; — 

November i8, 1867. — Today the steamer is tele- 




■THE rAO CHARLES'S" (CHARLES DICKENS AND CHARLES FECHTER). 
Fram a HumargMi Drawing by .\L7BSd Bbvan. 1879 



DICKENS AND FECHTER 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 141 

graphed with Dickens on board, and the tickets for his 
readings have been sold. Such a rush ! A long queue 
of people have been standing all day in the street — a 
good-humored crowd, but a weary one.^ The weather is 
clear but really cold, with winter's pinch in it. 

November 19. — ... Yesterday I adorned Mr. 
Dickens's room with flowers, which seemed to please 
him. He was in the best of good spirits with every- 
thing. 

Thursday^ November 21. — Mr. Dickens dined here. 
Agassiz, Emerson, Judge Hoar, Professor Holmes, Nor- 
ton, Greene, dear Longfellow, last not least, came to 
welcome. Dickens sat on my right, Agassiz at my left. 
I never saw Agassiz so full of fun. . . . 

Dickens bubbled over with fun, and I could not help 
fancying that Holmes bored him a little by talking at 
him. I was sorry for this, because Holmes is so simple 
and lovely, but Dickens is sensitive, very. He is fond 
of Carlyle, seems to love nobody better, and gave the 
most irresistible imitation of him. His queer turns of 
expression often convulsed us with laughter, and yet 
it is difiicult to catch them, as when, in speaking ot 
the writer of books, always putting himself, his real 
self, in, "which is always the case," he said; *'but 
you must be careful of not taking him for his next-door 
neighbor." 

^ On this very day Lowell wrote in the course of a letter to Fields : "James 
tells me you had a tremendous queue this morning. Don't fail to get me 
tickets, and for the first night. I should like to see his reception. It will 
leave a picture on the brain. And why should I not be there to welcome him, 
as well as Tom, Dick, or Harry ?" 



14:1 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

He spoke of the fineness of his Parisian audience — 
"the most delicately appreciative of all audiences." 
He also gave a most ludicrous account of a seasick 
curate trying to read the service on board ship last 
Sunday. He tells us Browning is really about to marry 
Miss Ingelow, and of Carlyle, that he is deeply sad- 
dened, irretrievably, by the death of his wife. Just as 
we were in a tempest of laughter over some witticism 
of his, he jumped up, seized me by the hand, and said 
good-night. He neither smoked nor drank. "I never 
do either from the time my readings 'set in,'" he said, 
as if it were a rainy season. . . . 

Among other interesting personal facts Dickens told 
us that he had last year burned all his private letters. 
An appeal from the daughter of Sydney Smith for some 
of his letters set him thinking on the subject, and one 
day when there was a big fire — [sentence unfinished]. 

Mr. Dickens left the table just as we were in a tem- 
pest of laughter. Dr. Holmes. . . was telling how inap- 
preciative he had found some country audiences — one 
he remembered in especial when his landlady accom- 
panied him to the lecture and her face, he observed, was 
the only one which rchixctl its grimness ! "Probably 
because she saw money enough in the house to cover 
your expenses," rejoined Dickens. That was enough; 
the laughter was prodigious. . . . 

Jfednesday, November 27. — What a pity that these 
days have flown while I have been unable to make any 
record of them. J. has been to walk each day with 
Dickens, and has come home full of wonderful things he 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 143 

has said.^ His variety is so inexhaustible that one can 
only listen in wonder. 

Thursday, :l^, — Thanksgiving Day. J. took Dick- 
ens to see the Aldriches' house. He was very much 
amused by what he saw there and has written out a full 
account to his daughter, Mrs. Collins. . . . 

I have made no record of our supper party of Wed- 
nesday evening. We had Alfred to wait, and a pretty 
supper and more important by far (tho' the first a con- 
sequent of the last) a pretty company. There were Mr. 
Dickens and Mr, Dolby, Helen Bell and Mrs. Silsbee, 
Mr. and Mrs. Bigelow, Mr. Hillard and Louisa and Mr. 
Beal. Mrs. Bell sang a little before supper ("Douglas" 
for one) very gracefully with real feeling. At nine o'clock 
oysters and fun began ; finally Mr. Dickens told several 
ghost stories, but none of them more interesting than 
a little bit of clairvoyance or what-you-will, which he 
let drop concerning himself. He said a story was sent to 
him for "All the Year Round," which he liked and ac- 
cepted ; just after the matter had been put in type, he 
received a letter from another person altogether from 
the one who had forwarded it in the first place, saying 
that he and not the first man was the author, and in 
proof of his position he supplied a date which was want- 
ing in the first paper. Curiously enough, Mr. Dickens, 
seeing the story hinged upon a date and the date being 

^ Even after Dickens's return to England, his sayings found their way into 
Mrs. Fields's journal ; as, for example : — 

"July 4, 1868. — J. made me laugh this morning (it was far too hot to 
laugh) by telling me that Dickens said of Gray, the poet, 'No man ever 
walked down to posterity with so small a book under his arm !'" 



i44 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

but a blank in the MS., had supphed one, as it were by- 
chance, and, behold ! /'/ was the same date which the new 
man had sent. 

Sunday. — Dined with Mr. Dickens at six o'clock. 
Mr. and Mrs. Bigelow, Mr. Dolby and ourselves were 
the only guests. 

After dinner we played two or three games which I 
will set down lest they should be forgotten. 

Descriptions of "Buzz," "Russian Scandal," and 
another wholly innocent amusement may be omitted. 

Monday night, December 2, 1867. — The first great 
reading! How we listened till we seemed turned into 
one eyeball ! How we all loved him ! How we longed to 
tell him all kinds of confidences ! How Jamie and he did 
hug in the anteroom afterward ! What a teacher he 
seemed to us of humanity as he read out his own words 
which have enchanted us from childhood ! And what a 
house it was ! Longfellow, Dana, Norton (Mrs. Dana, 
Jr., and the three little Andrews went with us), and a 
world of lovely faces and ardent admirers. 

Tuesday came Miss Dodge and Mrs. Hawthorne, 
Julian, and Rose. The reading was quite as remarkable, 
tho' more quiet than that of the night before. As usual, 
we went to speak to him at his request after it was over. 
Found him in the best of spirits, but very tired. "You 
can't think," he said, "what resolution it requires to 
dress again after it is over!" 

Monday, December 9. — Left home at 8 a.m. for 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 145 

New York. The day was clear and cold, the journey 
somewhat long, but on the whole extremely agreeable. 
We only had each other to plague or amuse, as the case 
might be, and we had the new Christmas story of Dick- 
ens and Wilkie Collins (called "No Thoroughfare") to 
read, and so by sufficient attention to the peculiarities 
or follies or troubles of our neighbors and some forget- 
fulness of our own, we came to the Westminster Hotel 
at night, in capital spirits but rather frozen physically. 
We had scant time to dress and dine and to go to the 
Dickens reading. We accomplished it, nevertheless. 
Saw the rapturous enthusiasm, heard the "Carol" far 
better read than in Boston, because the applause was 
more ready and he felt stimulated by it. Afterward Mr. 
D. sent for us to come to his room. He was fatigued, of 
course, but we sat at table with him and after a while he 
began to feel warmer as vigor returned. He brought out 
his jewels for us to see — a pearl Count D'Orsay once 
wore, set with diamonds, etc. — laughed and talked 
about the way we dress and other bits of nonsense sug- 
gested by the time, all turned towards the fine light of 
Charles Dickens's lovely soul and returning with a fresh 
gleam of beauty. We left early lest we should overfatigue 
him. 

Wednesday^ December 11. — At four Dickens came to 
dinner in our room with Eythinge and Anthony, his 
American designer and engraver. Afterward we went 
to the "Black Crook" together, and then home to the 
hotel, where we sat talking until one o'clock. There is 
nothing I should like so much to do as to set down every 



146 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

word he said in that time, but much must go down to 
oblivion. . . . 

He talked of actors and acting — said if a man's 
Hamlet was a sustained conception, it was not to be 
quarrelled with ; the only question was, what a man of 
melancholy temperament would do under such circum- 
stances. Talked of Charles Reade and the greatness of 
"Griffith Gaunt," and the pity of it that he did not 
stand on his own bottom instead of getting in with Dion 
Boucicault, etc., etc. But after dinner he unbent, and 
while we were in the box at the theatre showed how true 
his sympathies were with the actors, was especially care- 
ful to make no sound which could hurt their feelings by 
apparent want of attention. The play was very dull, so 
we sat and talked. He told me that no ballet dancer 
could have pretty feet, and one dreadful thing was they 
could never wash them, as water renders the feet ten- 
der and they must bccf)mc horny. He asked about 
Longfellow's sorrow again and expressed the deepest 
sympathy, but said he was like a man purified by suffer- 
ing. 

We had punch in our room after the play, when he 
laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks over Bob 
Sawyer's party and the remembrance of the laughter he 
had seen depicted on the faces of people the night be- 
fore. Jack Hopkins was such a favorite with J. that D. 
made up the face again and went over the necklace story 
until we roared aloud. At length he began to talk of 
Fechter and to describe the sensitive character of the 
man. He saw him first quite by accident in Paris, hav- 







^6 



/i4,^- 



-^ 



^^a-i«^^y-»,^ C-.-?C. 






Reduced facsimile of Dickens's directions, preserved among the 
Fields papers, for the brewing of pleasant beverages 




148 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

ing strolled into a little theatre there one night. He was 
making love to a woman, and so elevated her as well as 
himself by the sentiment in which he enveloped her that 
they trod into purer ether and in another sphere quite 
lifted out of the present. " ' By heavens ! ' I said, ' a man 
who can do this can do anything!' I never saw two 
people more purely and instantly elevated by the power 
of love. The manner in which he presses the hem of the 
dress of Lucy in the 'Bride of Lammermoor' is some- 
thing surpassing speech and simply wonderful. The man 
has a thread of genius in him which is unmistakable, yet 
I should not call him a man of genius exactly, either." 
Mr. Dickens described him as a man full of plans for 
plays, one who had lost much money as a manager, too. 
He was apt to come down to Gad's Hill with his head 
full of plans about a play which he wished Mr. Dickens 
to write out and which Fcchtcr would act in the writing- 
room, using Mr. Dickens's small pillow for a baby in a 
manner to make the latter feel, if Fechter were but a 
writer, how marvellous his powers of representation 
would be. " I, who for so many years have been study- 
ing the best way of putting things, felt utterly amazed 
and distanced by this man." 

Before the end of our talk Mr. Dickens became pene- 
trated by the memory of his friend and brought him 
before us in all the warmth of ardent sympathy. 
Fechter is sure to come to this country: we are sure to 
have the happiness of knowing him (if we all live), and 
in that event I shall consider last night as the begin- 
ning of a new friendship. 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 149 

Sunday y December 22. — Another week has gone. 
We are again at home in our dear Httle nook by the 
Charles, and tonight the lover of Christmas comes to 
have dinner with us. We had a merry time last Sunday, 
and after we had separated the hotel must needs take 
fire — to be sure, I had been packing and was in my 
first sleep and knew nothing distinctly of it ; but it was 
an escape all the same and Mr. Dickens rushed out to 
help, as he always seems to do. . . . 

At night came Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby, Mr. 
Lowell and Mabel, Mr. and Mrs. Dorr, to dinner. It 
was really a beautiful Christmas festival, as we intended 
it should be for the love of this new apostle of Christmas. 
Mr. Dickens talked all the time, as he always will do, 
generously, when the moment comes that he sees it is 
expected, of Sir Sam. Baker, of Froude, of Fechter again, 
this time as if he did not know the man, but spoke crit- 
ically as if he were a stranger, seeing Lowell's face when 
his name was mentioned, which inclined itself sneeringly. 

We played games at table afterward, which turned 
out so queerly that we had storms of laughter. 

What a shame it is to write down anything respecting 
one's contact with Charles Dickens and have it so slight 
as my accounts are ; but the subtle turns of conversa- 
tion are so difficult to render — the way in which he 
represents the woman who will not on any account be 
induced to look at him while he is reading, and at whom 
he looks steadily, endeavoring to compel the eyes to 
move — all these queer turns are too delicate to be set 
down. I thought I should have had a convulsion of 



ISO MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

laughter when Mrs. Dorr said Miss Laura Howe sat 
down in her (Mrs. D.'s) room and wrote out a charade 
in such an unparalleled and brilliant manner that no- 
body could have outshone her — not even the present 
company. "In the same given time, I trust ?" said Dick- 
ens. "No, no," said the lady, persistently. 

December 31. — The year goes out clear and cold. 
The moon was marvellously bright last night, and every 
time I woke there she was with her attendant star look- 
ing freshly in upon us sleeping mortals in her eternal, 
unwearied way. We received a letter from Charles 
Dickens yesterday, saying he was coming to stay with 
us when he returns. What a pleasure this will be to us! 
We anticipate his coming with continual delight! To 
have him as much as we can, at morning, noon, and 
night. 

This letter, long preserved in an American copy of 
"A Christmas Carol" on the shelves of the Charles 
Street library, throws a light of its own on the physical 
handicaps with which Dickens was struggling thnnigh 
all this time. 

Westminster Hotel, New York. 
Sunday^ Txisenty-Ninth Deamber, 1867 

Mv DEAR Fields: — 

When I come to Boston for the two readings of the 
6th and 7th I shall be alone, as Dolby must be selling 
elsewhere. If you and Mrs. Fields should have no other 
visitor, I shall be very glad indeed on this occasion to 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 151 

come to you. It is very likely that you may have some 
one with you. Of course you will tell me so if you have, 
and I will then reembellish the Parker House. 

Since I left Boston last, I have been so miserable 
that I have been obliged to call in a Dr. — Dr. Fordyce 
Barker, a very agreeable fellow. He was strongly in- 
clined to stop the Readings altogether for some few 
days, but I pointed out to him how we stood committed, 
and how I must go on if it could be done. My great ter- 
ror was yesterday's Matinee, but it went off splendidly. 
(A very heavy cold indeed, an irritated condition of the 
uvula, and a restlessly low state of the nervous system, 
were your friend's maladies. If I had not avoided vis- 
iting, I think I should have been disabled for a week 
or so.) 

I hear from London that the general question in so- 
ciety is, what will be blown up next by the Fenians. 

With love to Mrs. Fields, Believe me. 

Ever affectionately yours, 

And hers, 
Charles Dickens 

Saturday nighty January 4. — All in readiness. Mr. 
Dickens arrived punctually with Mr. Osgood at half- 
past nine. Hot supper was soon in order and we put 
ourselves at it. The dear "chief" was in the best of 
good humor in spite of a cold which hangs about him 
and stuffs up head and throat, only leaving him for two 
hours at night when he reads. 'T is something to be in 
first-rate mood with such a cold. . . . 



T52 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

The Readings have been so successful in New York 
he cannot fail to be pleased, and he does not fail to show 
it. Kate Field, New Year's Eve, placed a basket of 
flowers on his table; he had seen her bright eyes and 
sensitive face, he said. I was glad for Kate, because he 
wrote her a little note, which pleased her, of course. 

Wednesday^ 'January 8, 1 2 a.m. — I take up the 
pen again, having bade our guest a most unwilling 
farewell. Last night he read " Copperfield " and the 
Trial from "Pickwick." It was an enormous house, 
packed in every extremity, receipts in gold about five 
hundred and ten pounds ! ! He was pleased, naturally, 
and read marvellously well even for him. He was some- 
what excited and a good deal tired when he returned, 
and in spite of a light supper and stiff glass of punch, 
which usually contains soporific qualities, he could not 
sleep until near morning. He has been in the best of 
spirits during this visit — when he came downstairs 
last night to take a. cup of coffee before leaving, he 
turned to J., saying, "The hour has almost come when I 
to sulphurous and tormenting gas must render up my- 
self!" He has been afflicted with catarrh, which comes 
and goes and distracts him with a buzzing in his head. 
It usually leaves him for the two reading hours. This 
is convenient, but it probably returns with worse force. 

Sunday night dinner went off brilliantly. Longfellow, 
Appleton, Mr. and Mrs. Thaxtcr came to meet "the 
chief" and ourselves. Unfortunately there was one 
empty seat which Rowse, the artist, had promised to 
fill, but was ill at the last and could not — curiously 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 153 

enough we had asked Osgood, Miss Putnam, and Mr. 
Gay besides, all kept away by accident when they would 
have given their eyes to come. In the course of the day 
he had been to see (with O. W. H.) the ground of the 
Parkman murder which has lately been so clearly de- 
scribed by Sir Emerson Tennent in "All the Year 
Round"; in the evening the talk turned naturally 
enough that way, when, after much surmise with regard 
to the previous life of the man, Mr. Longfellow looked 
up and with an assured, clear tone, said : "Now I have 
a story to tell ! A year or two before this event took 
place Dr. Webster invited a party of gentlemen to a 
dinner at this house, I believe to meet some foreigner 
who was interested in science. The doctor himself was 
a chemist, and after dinner he had a large bowl placed 
in the centre of the table with some chemical mixture in 
it which he set on fire after turning the lamp low. A 
lurid light came from the bowl which caused a livid 
look upon the faces of those who sat round the table, 
and while all were observing the ghastly effect. Dr. 
Webster rose and, pulling a bit of rope from somewhere 
about his person, put it around his neck, reached his 
head over the bowl to heighten the effect, hung it on 
one side, and lolled his tongue out to give the appear- 
ance of a man who had been hanged ! ! ! The whole 
scene was terrible and ghastly in the extreme, and, 
remembered in the light of what followed, had a pre- 
science frightful to contemplate." ^ 

^ See Forster's Life, III, 368, for the same story told by Dickens in a letter 
to Lord Lytton, without naming Longfellow as the narrator. 



154 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Appleton did not talk as much as usual, and we were 
rather glad; but Mrs. Thaxter's story took strong hold 
on Dickens's fancy, and he told me afterward that 
when he awaked in the night he thought of her. I 
have seldom sat at dinner with a gentleman more care- 
ful and fine in his choice and taste of food and drink 
than C. D. The idea of his ever passing the bounds of 
temperance is an absurdity not to be thought of for a 
moment. In this respect he is quite unlike Mr. Thack- 
eray, who at times both ate and drank inordinately, 
and without doubt shortened his life by his careless- 
ness in these particulars. John Forster, C. D.'s old 
friend, is quite ill with gout and some other ails, so 
C. 1). writes him long letters full of his experiences. 
Wc breakfast at half-past nine punctually, he on a 
rasher of bacon and an egg and a cup of tea, always 
preferring this same thing. Afterward we talk or play 
with the sewing-machine or anything else new and odd 
to him. Then he sits down to write until one o'clock, 
when he likes a glass of wine and biscuit, and afterward 
goes to walk until nearly four, when we dine. After 
dinner, reading days, he will take a cup of strong coffee, 
a tiny glass of brandy, and a cigar, and likes to lie 
down for a short time to get his voice in order. His man 
then takes a pt^rtmanteau of clothes to the reading hall, 
where he dresses for the evening. Upon our return we 
always have supper and he brews a marvellous punch, 
which usually makes us all sleep like tops after the 
excitement. The perfect kindliness and sympathy which 
radiates from the man is, after all, the secret never to 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 155 

be told, but always to be studied and to thank God for. 
His rapid eyes, which nothing can escape, eyes which, 
when he first appears upon the stage, seem to interro- 
gate the lamps and all things above and below (like 
exclamation points, Aldrich says), are unlike anything 
before in our experience. There are no living eyes like 
them, swift and kind, possessing none of the bliss of 
ignorance, but the different bliss of one who sees what 
the Lord has done and what, or something of what, he 
intends. Such charity ! Poor man ! He must have 
learned great need for that. . . . He is a man who has 
suffered, evidently. Georgina Hogarth he always 
speaks of in the most affectionate terms, such as "she 
has been a mother to my children," "she keeps the list 
of the wine cellar, and every few days examines to see 
what we are now in want of." 

I hardly know anything more amusing than when he 
begs not to be "set a-going" on one of his .readings by a 
quotation or otherwise, and [it is] odd enough to hear 
him go on, having been so touched off. He has been a 
great student of Shakespeare, which appears often in 
his talk. His love of the theatre is something which 
never pales, he says, and the people who go upon the 
stage, however poor their pay or hard their lot, love it, 
he thinks, too well ever to adopt another vocation of 
their free will. One of the oddest sights a green room 
presents, he says, is when they are collecting children 
for a pantomime. For this purpose the prompter calls 
together all the women in the ballet and begins giving 
out their names in order, while they press about him. 



156 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

eager for the chance of increasing their poor pay by the 
extra pittance their children will receive. "Mrs. John- 
son, how many ?" "Two, sir." "What years ?" "Seven 
and ten." "Mrs. B." — and so on until the requisite 
number is made up. He says, where one member of a 
family obtains regular employment at the theatre, others 
are sure to come in after a time; the mother will be in 
the wardrobe, children in pantomime, elder sisters in 
the ballet, etc. 

When we asked him to return to us, he said he must 
be loyal to "the show," and, having three or four men 
with him, ought to be at an hotel where he could attend 
properly to the business. He never forgets the needs of 
those who are dependent upon him, is liberal to his 
servants (and to ours also), and liberal in his heart to 
all sorts and conditions of men. 

I have one deeply seated hope, that he will read for 
the Freed people before he leaves the country; and I 
cannot help thinking he will. . . . 

For more than a month from the time of this entry 
Dickens was carrying the triumph of his readings into 
other cities than Boston. There he had left a faithful 
champion in the person of Mrs. Fields, who wrote in 
her diary on January 26, 1868 : "It is odd how preju- 
diced people have allowed themselves to become about 
Dickens. I seldom make a call where his name is intro- 
duced that I do not feel the injustice done to him per- 
sonally, as if mankind resented the fact that he had 
excited more love than most men." As his return to 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 157 

Boston drew near, she wrote, February i8th: "We are 
anticipating and doorkeeping for the arrival of our 
friend. Whatever unpleasant is said of Charles Dickens 
I take almost as if said against myself. It is so hard to 
help this when you love a friend." On February 21st 
there is the entry: "We go to Providence tonight to 
hear *Dr. Marigold.' I have been full of plans for next 
week, which is to be a busy season with us of company." 

Saturday^ February 22. — We have heard ** Mari- 
gold" ! To be sure, the audience was sadly stupid and 
unresponsive, but we were penetrated by it. . . . 
What a night we had in Providence ! Our beds were 
comfortable enough, for which we were deeply thankful ; 
but none of the party slept, I believe, except Mr. Dolby, 
and his rest was Inevitably cut short in the morning by 
business. I believe I lay awake from pure pleasure after 
such a treat. Hearing "Marigold" and having supper 
afterward with the dear great man. We played a game 
at cards which was most curious — indeed, something 
more — so much more that I have forgotten to be 
afraid of him. 

In writing the chapter, "Glimpses of Emerson," in 
"Authors and Friends," Mrs. Fields drew freely upon 
the entry that here follows in its fullness. 

Tuesday morning^ February 25. — Somewhat fa- 
tigued. The "Marigold" went off brilliantly. He never 
read better nor was more universally applauded. Mr. 



158 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Emerson came down to go, and passed the night here; 
of course we sat talking until late, he being much sur- 
prised at the artistic perfection of the performance. It 
was queer enough to sit by his side, for when his stoicism 
did at length break down, he laughed as if he must 
crumble to pieces at such unusual bodily agitation, and 
with a face on as if it hurt him dreadfully — to look at 
him was too much for me, already full of laughter my- 
self. Afterward we all went in to shake hands for a 
moment. 

When we came back home Mr. Emerson asked me a 
great many questions about C. D. and pondered much. 
Finally he said, "I am afraid he has too much talent for 
his genius; it is a fearful locomotive to which he is 
bound and can never be free from it nor set at rest. You 
see him quite wrong, evidently; and would persuade 
me that he is a genial creature, full of sweetness and 
amenities and superior to his talents, but I fear he is 
harnessed to them. He is too consummate an artist to 
have a thread of nature left. He daunts me ! I have not 
the key." 

When Mr. Fields came in he repeated, " Mrs. Fields 
would persuade me he is a man easy to communicate 
with, sympathetic and accessible to his friends; but her 
eyes do not see clearly in this matter, I am sure." "Look 
for yourself, dear Mr. Emerson," I answered, laughing, 
"and then report to me afterward." 

While we were enjoying ourselves in this way, a great 
change has come to the country. The telegram arrived 
during the Reading bringing the news of the President's 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 159 

impeachment, 126 against 47. Since Johnson is to be 
thrust out, and since another revolution is upon us 
(Heaven help us that it be a peaceful one), we can only 
be thankful that the majority is so large. Mr. Dickens's 
account of the ability of Johnson, of his apparent in- 
tegrity and of his present temperance, as contrasted with 
the present (reported) failures of Grant in this respect, 
have made me shudder, for I presume Grant is inevit- 
ably the next man. Mrs. Agassiz was evidently pleased 
with the appearance of General Grant and his wife. 
She Hked their repose of manner and ease ; but I think 
this rather a shallow judgment because poise and ease 
of manner belong to the coarsest natures and to the 
finest ; in the latter it is conquest ; and this is why these 
quahties have so high a place in the esteem of man ; but 
it is likewise the gift of society people who neither feel 
nor understand the varied natures with whom they come 
in contact. 

Longfellow is at work on a tragedy, of which no words 
are spoken at present. Today Mr. Dickens does not go 
out ; he is writing letters home. Yesterday he and J. 
walked seven miles, which is about their average gen- 
erally. . . . 

February Tj. — Longfellow's birthday. Last night 
Dickens went to a supper at Lowell's and J. passed the 
evening with Longfellow. L.'s tragedy comes on apace. 
He looks to Fechter to help him. Dickens has doubtless 
done much to quicken him to write. He has two nearly 
finished in blank verse, both begun since this month 
came in. J. returned at half-past eleven, bringing an 



i6o MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

unread newspaper in his pocket which L. had lent him, 
telling him to read something to me about Dickens 
and return. Ah me ! We could have cried as we 
read! It was the saddest of sad letters, written at the 
time the separation from his wife took place. The gen- 
tleman to whom he wrote it has died and the letter 
has stolen into print. I only hope the poor man may 
never see it. 

Tonight he reads "Carol" and "Boots" and sups 
here with Longfellow afterward. 

An entry in Mrs. FicKls's liiary about two years later 
indicates with some clearness that she overestimated 
the sympathy between lx)ngfellow and Dickens. After 
a visit from Longfellow, she wrote, May 24, 1870: — 

When Mr. L. talks so much and so pleasantly, I ani 
curiously reminded of Dickens's saying to Forster, who 
lamented that he did not see I^xingfellow upon his return 
to I^)ndon, "It was not a great loss this time, Forster; 
he had not a word to say for himself — he was the most 
embarrassing man in all England !" It is a difference of 
temjx'ranicnt which will never let those two men come 
together. They have no handle by which to take hold of 
each other. I^)ngfellow told a gentleman at his table 
when J. was present that Dickens saved himself for his 
books, there was nothing to be learned in private — he 
never talked ! ! 

To return to Dickens in Boston : — 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA i6i 

Sunday^ March i . — What a week we have had ! I 
feel utterly weary this morning, although I did start up 
with exceeding bravery and walked four miles just after 
breakfast, in order to see that the flowers were right at 
church and to ask some people to dinner today who 
could not, however, come. The air was very keen and 
exciting and I did not know I was tired until I came 
back and collapsed. Our supper came off Thursday, 
but without Dickens. His cold had increased upon him 
seriously and he was really ill after his long, difficult 
reading. But Longfellow was perfectly lovely, so easily 
pleased and so deeply pleased with my little efforts to 
make this day a festival time. Dickens and Whittier 
both sent affectionate and graceful notes when they 
found they really could not come. Our company stayed 
until two A.M., Emerson never more talkative and good. 
He is a noble purifier of the social atmosphere, always 
keeping the talk simple as possible but up to the highest 
pitch of thought and feeling. 

Friday, the Dana girls, Sallie and Charlotte, passed 
the night with us and went to the reading and shook 
hands with Mr. Dickens afterward. They were per- 
fectly happy when they went away yesterday. . . . 

[The walking match between Dolby and Osgood to 
which the following paragraph refers has already been 
mentioned. The elaborately humorous conditions of the 
contest, drawn up by Dickens, are printed in "Yester- 
days with Authors." "We have had such a funny paper 
from Dickens today," Mrs. Fields had written in her 
diary, on February 5th, "that it can only describe it- 



i62 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

self — Articles drawn up arranging for a walk and din- 
ner upon his return here, as if it were some fierce legal 
document."] 

I had barely time yesterday, after the girls left, to 
dress and prepare some flowers and some lunch and 
make my way in a carriage, first to the Parker House at 
Mr. Dickens's kind request, to see if all the table ar- 
rangements were perfect for the dinner. I found he had 
done everything he could think of to make the feast go 
off well and had really left nothing for me to suggest, so 
I turned about and drove over the mill-dam, following 
Messrs. Dickens, Dolby, Osgood, and Fields, who had 
left just an hour before on a walking match of six miles 
out and six in. This agreement was made and articles 
drawn up several weeks ago, signed and sealed in form 
by all the parties, to come off without regard to the 
weather. The wind was blowing strong from the north- 
west, very cold, and the snow blowing, too. They had 
turned and were coming back when I came up with 
them. Osgood was far ahead and, after saluting them 
all and giving a cheer for America, discovering too that 
they had refreshed on the way, I drove back to Mr. 
Osgood, keeping near him and administering brandy all 
the way in town. The walk was accomplished in pre- 
cisely two hours forty-eight minutes. Of course Mr. 
Dickens stayed by his man, who was beaten out and 
out. They were all exhausted, for the snow made the 
walking extremely difficult, and they all jumped into 
carriages and drove home with great speed to bathe and 
sleep before dinner. 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 163 

At six o'clock we were assembled, eighteen of us, for 
dinner, looking our very best (I hope) — at least we all 
tried for that, I am sure — and sat punctually down to 
our elegant dinner. I have never seen a dinner more 
beautiful. Two English crowns of violets were at the 
opposite ends of the table and flowers everywhere ar- 
ranged in perfect taste. I sat at Mr. Dickens's right 
hand and next Mr. Lowell. Mrs. Norton sat the other 
side of our host, and he divided his attention loyally 
between us. He talked with me about Spiritualism as 
it is called, the humbug of which excites his deepest ire, 
although no one could believe more entirely than he in 
magnetism and the unfathomed ties between man and 
man. He told me many curious things about the traps 
which had been laid by well-meaning friends to bring 
him into "spiritual" circles. But he said, "If I go to a 
friend's house for the purpose of exposing a fraud in 
which she believes, I am doing a very disagreeable thing 
and not what she invited me for. Forster and I were in- 
vited to Lord Dufferin's to a little dinner with Home. 
I refused, but Forster went, saying beforehand to Lord 
Dufferin that Home would have no spirits about if he 
came. Lord Dufferin said, 'Nonsense,' and the dinner 
came off; but they were hardly seated at table when 
Home announced that there was an adverse influence 
present and the spirits would not appear. *Ah,* said 
Forster, 'my spirits in this case were clearer than yours, 
for they told me before I came that there would be no 
manifestations tonight.'" 

Speaking of dreams, he said he was convinced that no 



164 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

man (judging from his own experience, which could not 
be altogether singular, but must be a type of the experi- 
. ence of others), he believed no writer, neither Shake- 
speare nor Scott nor any other who had ever invented a 
character, had ever been known to dream about the 
creature of his imagination. It would be like a man's 
dreaming of meeting himself, which was clearly an im- 
possibility. Things exterior to oneself must always be 
the basis of our dreams. This talk about characters led 
him to say how mysterious and beautiful the action of 
the mind was around any given subject. "Suppose," he 
said, "this wine-glass were a character, fancy it a man, 
endue it with certain qualities, and soon fine filmy webs 
of thoughts almost impalpable coming from every direc- 
tion, and yet wc know not from where, spin and weave 
around it until it assumes form and bcaury and becomes 
instinct with life. ..." 

Mr. Lowell asked him some question in a low voice 
about the country, when I heard him say presently that 
it was very much grown up, indeed he should not know 
oftentimes that he was not in England, things went on 
so much the same and with very few exceptions (hardly 
worth mentioning) he was let alone precisely as he would 
have been there. 

He loves to talk of Gad's Hill and stopped joyfully 
from other talk to tell me how his daughter Mary ar- 
ranged his table with flowers. He speaks continually of 
her great taste in combining flowers. "Sometimes she 
will have nothing but water-lilies," he said, as if the 
memory were a fragrance. 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 165 

Some one has said, "We cannot love and be wise." 
I will gladly give away the inconsistent wisdom, for 
Jamie and I are truly penetrated with grateful love to 
CD. 

Wednesday J March 3. — Mr. Dickens came over 
last night with Messrs. Osgood and Dolby, to pass the 
evening and have a little punch and supper and a merry 
game with us. . . . 

They left punctually before eleven, having promised 
the driver they would not keep him waiting in the cold. 
Jamie has every day long walks with him. He has told 
him much regarding the forms and habits of his life. 
He is fond of "Gad's Hill," and his "dear daughters" 
and their aunt. Miss Hogarth, make his home circle. 
What a dear one it is to him can be seen whenever his 
thought turns that way ; and if his letters do not come 
punctually, he is in low spirits. He is a great actor and 
artist, but above all a great and loving and well-beloved 
man. (This I cling to in memory of Mr. Emerson's 
dictum.) 

I am deep in Carlyle's history and every little thing I 
hear chimes in with that. After the dinner (at the 
Parker) the other night, Mr. Dickens thought he would 
take a warm bath; but, the water being drawn, he 
began playing the clown in pantomime on the edge of 
the bath (with his clothes on) for the amusement of 
Dolby and Osgood ; in a moment and before he knew 
where he was, he had tumbled in head over heels, clothes 
and all. A second and improved edition of "Les Noy- 
ades," I thought. Surely this book is a marvel of thought 



i66 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

and labor. Why, why have I left it unknown to myself 
until now ? I fear, unlike Lowell, it is because I could 
not read eighteen uninterrupted hours without apo- 
plexy or some other *exy, which would destroy what 
power I have forever. 

March 6. — Mr. Dickens dined here last night 
without company except Messrs. Dolby and Osgood 
and Howells. We had a very merry time. They had 
been to visit the Cambridge Printing Office in the after- 
noon and had been shown so many things that "the 
chief" said he began to think he should have a bitter 
hatred against any mortal who undertook to show him 
anything else in the world, and laughed immoderately 
at J. T. F.'s proposition to show him the new fruit house 
afterward. We all had a game of Nincomtwitch and 
separated rather early because we were going to a party ; 
and as C. D. shook me by the hand to say gcx)d-bye, he 
said he hoped we would have a better time at this party 
than he ever had at any party in all his life. A part of 
the dinner-time was taken up by half guess and half 
calculation of how far Mr, Dickens's manuscript would 
extend in a single line. Mr. Osgood said 40 miles. J. 
said icxDjOOO ( ! !). I believe they are really going to find 
out. C. D. said he felt as if it would go farther than 40 
miles, and was inclined to be "down" on Osgood until 
he saw him doing figures in his head after a fearful 
fashion. All this amusing talk served to give one a 
strange, weird sensation of the value of words over time 
and space; these little marks of immeasurable value 
covering so slight a portion of the rough earth 1 Howells 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 167" 

talked a little of Venice, thought the Ligurians lived 
better than the Venetians. C. D. said they ate but little 
meat when he lived in Genoa; chiefly "pasta" with a 
good soup poured over it. . . . 

He leaves Boston today, to return the first of April, 
so I will end this poor little surface record here, hoping 
always that the new sheet shall have something written 
down of a deeper, simpler, and more inseeing nature. 

On the return of Dickens to Boston, Mrs. Fields dined 
with him at the Parker House, March 31, 1868, and, 
commenting on his lack of "talent" for sleeping, wrote 
in her diary : — 

I remember Carlyle says, "When Dulness puts his 
head upon his mattresses, Dulness sleeps," referring to 
the apathetic people who went on their daily habits and 
avocations in Paris while men were guillotined by thou- 
sands in the next street. Mr. Dickens talked as usual, 
much and naturally — first of the various hotels of 
which he had late experience. The one in Portland was 
particularly bad, the dinner, poor as it was, being 
brought in small dishes, " as if Osgood and I should quar- 
rel over it," everything being very bad and disgusting 
which the little dishes contained. 

At last they came to the book, "Ecce Homo," in 
which Dickens can see nothing of value, any more than 
we. He thinks Jesus foresaw and guarded as well as he 
could against the misinterpreting of his teaching, that 
the four Gospels are all derived from some anterior 



i68 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

written Scriptures — made up, perhaps, with additions 
and interpolations from the "Talmud," in which he ex- 
pressed great interest and admiration. Among other 
things which prove how little the Gospels should be 
taken literally is the fact that broad phylacteries were not 
in use until some years after Jesus lived, so that the 
passage in which this reference occurs, at least, must 
only be taken as conveying the spirit and temper, not 
the actual form of speech, of our Lord. Mr. Dickens 
spoke reverently and earnestly, and said much more if I 
could recall it perfectly. 

Then he came to "spiritualism" again, and asked if 
he had ever told us his interview with Colchester, the 
famous medium. He continued that, being at Kneb- 
worth one day, Lytton, having finished his dinner and 
retired to the comfort of his pipe, said : " Why don't you 
see some of these famous men ? What a pity Home has 
just gone." (Here Dickens imitated to the life Lytton's 
manner of speaking, so I could see the man.) "Well," 
said D., "he went on to say so much about it that I 
inquired of him who was the next best man. He said 
there was one Colchester, if possible better than Home. 
So I took Colchester's address, got Charley Collins, my 
son-in-law, to write to him asking an interview for five 
gentlemen and for any day he should designate, the 
hour being two o'clock. A day being fixed, I wrote to a 
young French conjuror, with whom I had no acquaint- 
ance but had observed his great cleverness at his busi- 
ness before the public, to ask him to accompany us. 
He acceded with alacrity. Therefore, with poor Chaun- 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 169 

cey Townshend, just dead, and one other person whom 
I do not at this moment recall, we waited upon Mr. Col- 
chester. As we entered the room, I leading the way, 
the man, recognizing me immediately, turned deadly 
pale, especially when he saw me followed by the con- 
juror and Townshend, who, with his colored imperial 
and beard and tight-fitting wig, looked like a member 
of the detective police. He trembled visibly, became 
livid to the eyes, all of which was visible in spite of 
paint with which his face was covered to the eyes. He 
withdrew for a few minutes, during which we heard 
him in hot discussion with his accomplice, telling him 
how he was cornered and trying to imagine some way 
in which to get out of the trap, the other evidently urg- 
ing him to go through with it now the best way he could. 
He returned, therefore, and placed himself with his back 
to the light, while it shone upon our faces. We sat 
awhile in silence until he began, insolently turning to 
me : 'Take up the alphabet and think of somebody who 
is dead, pass your hands over the letters, and the spirit 
will indicate the name.' I thought of Mary and took 
the alphabet, and when I came to M, he rapped; but 
I was sure that I had unconsciously signified by some 
movement and determined to be more skilful the next 
time. 

For the next letter, therefore, he went on to H, and 
then asked me if that was right. I told him I thought 
the spirits ought to know. He then began with 
some one else, but doing nothing he became hotter 
and hotter, the perspiration pouring from his face, until 



I70 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

he got up, said the spirits were against him, and was 
about to withdraw. I then rose and told him that it 
was the most shameless imposition, that he had got us 
there with the intent to deceive and under false pre- 
tences, that he had done nothing and could do nothing. 
He offered to return our money — I said the fact of his 
taking the money at all was the point. At last the 
wretch said, turning to the Frenchman, 'I did tell you 
one name, Valentine.' 'Yes,' answered the young con- 
juror, with a sudden burst of English, 'Yes, but I 
showed it to you !' indicating with a swift movement of 
the hand how he had given him a chance." Then it was 
all up with Colchester, and more scathing words than 
those spoken by Dickens to him have been seldom 
spoken by mortal. 

It was the righteous anger of one trying to avenge 
and help the world. Mr. Dickens always seems to 
me like one who, working earnestly with his eyes fixed 
on the immutable, nevertheless finds to his own sur- 
prise that his words place him among the prophets. 
He does not arrogate a place to himself there; indeed 
he is singularly humble (as it seems to us) in the 
moral position he takes; but for all that is led by the 
Divine Hand to see what a power he is and in an 
unsought-for manner finds himself among the teachers 
of the earth. He says nowhere is a man placed in such 
an unfair position as at church. If one could only be 
allowed to get up and state his objections, it would be 
very well, but under the circumstances he declines 
being preached to. 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 171 

A few days later Mrs. Fields heard Dickens read the 
"Christmas Carol" for the last time in Boston. 



Such a wonderful evening as it was ! ! We were on fire 
with enthusiasm and in spite of some people who went 
with us . . . looking, as C. D. said, as if they were sorry 
they had come, they were really filled with enthusiasm, 
and enjoying as fully as their critical and crossed natures 
would allow. He himself was full of fun and put in all 
manner of queer things for our amusement ; but what he 
put in, involuntarily, when he turned on a man who was 
standing staring fixedly at him with an opera glass, was 
almost more than we could bear. The stolidity of the 
man, the fixed glass, the despairing, annihilating look of 
Dickens were too much for our equanimity. 

Thursday. — Anniversary of C. D.'s marriage day 
and of John Forster's birthday. C. D. not at all well, 
coughing all the time and in low spirits. Mr. Dolby 
came in when J. was there in the morning to say there 
were two gentlemen from New Bedford (friends of 
Mr. Osgood's) who wished to see him. Would he allow 
them to come in ? "No, I '11 be damned if I will," he 
said, like a spoiled child, starting up from his chair ! 
J. was equally amused and astonished at the outburst, 
but sleeplessness, narcotics, and the rest of the crew of 
disturbers have done their worst. My only fear is he 
may be ill. However, they had a walk together towards 
noon and he revived, but coughed badly in the evening. 
I think, too, only ^1300 in the house was bad for his 
spirits 1 



172 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

/Ipril 7. — Dickens . . . told Jamie the other day 
in walking that he wrote "Nicholas Nickleby" and 
"Oliver Twist" at the same time for rival magazines 
from month to month. Once he was taken ill, with both 
magazines waiting for unwritten sheets. He immedi- 
ately took steamer for Boulogne, took a room in an inn 
there, secure from interruption, and was able to return 
just in season for the monthly issues with his work com- 
pleted. He sees now how the work of both would have 
been better done had he worked only upon one at a 
time. 

After the exertion of last evening he looked pale and 
exhausted. Longfellow and Norton joined with us in 
trying to dissuade him from future Readings after these 
two. He docs not recover his vitality after the effort 
of reading, and his spirits are naturally somewhat de- 
pressed by the use of soporifics, which at length became 
a necessity. . . . "CoppcrficKl" was a tragedy last 
night — less vigor but great tragic power came out of 
it. 

April 8. — In spite of a deluge of rain last night 
there was a large audience to hear Dickens, and lx)ng- 
fellow came as usual. He read with more vigor than 
the night before and seemed better. . . . The time ap- 
proaches swiftly for our flight to New York. We dread 
to leave home and would only do it for hiniy besides, the 
pleasure must be much in the fact of trying to do some- 
thing rather than in really doing anything, for I fear he 
will be too ill antl utterly fatigued to care much about 
anything but rest. 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 173 

Friday y April 10. — Left home at eight o'clock in 
the morning, found our dearly beloved friend C. D. 
already awaiting us, with two roses in his coat and look- 
ing as fresh as possible. It was my first ride in America 
in a compartment car. Mr. Dolby made the fourth in 
our little party and we had a table and a game of "Nin- 
com" and "Casino" and talked and laughed and whiled 
away the time pleasantly until we arrived here at the 
Westminster Hotel in time for dinner at six. I was im- 
pressed all day long with the occasional languor which 
came over C. D. and always with the exquisite delicacy 
and quickness of his perception, something as fine as the 
finest woman possesses, which combined itself won- 
drously with the action of the massive brain and the 
rapid movement of those strong, strong hands. I felt 
how deeply we had learned to love him and how hard it 
would be for us to part. 

At dinner he gave us a marvellous description of his 
life as a reporter. It seems he invented (in a measure) a 
system of stenography for himself; this is to say he 
altered Gurney's system to suit his own needs. He was 
a very young man, not yet 20, when at seven guineas a 
week he was engaged as reporter on the" Morning Chron- 
icle," then a very large and powerful paper. At this 
period the present Lord Derby, then Mr. Stanley, was 
beginning his brilliant career, and O'Connell, Shiel, and 
others were at the height of their powers. Wherever 
these men spoke a corps of reporters was detailed to 
follow them and with the utmost expedition forward 
verbatim reports to the " Chronicle." Often and often he 



174 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

has gone by post-chaise to Edinburgh, heard a speech 
or a part of it (having instructions, whatever happened, 
to leave the place again at a certain hour, the next re- 
porter taking up his work where he must leave it), and 
has driven all the way back to London, a bag of sover- 
eigns on one side of his body and a bag of slips of paper 
on the other, writing, writing desperately all the way 
by the light of a small lamp. At each station a man on 
horseback would stand ready to seize the sheets already 
prepared and ride with them to London. Often and 
often this work would make him deadly sick and he 
would have to plunge his head out of the window to re- 
lieve himself; still the writing went steadily forward on 
very little slips of paper which he held before him, just 
resting his body on the edge of the seat and his paper on 
the front of the window underneath the lamp. As the 
station was reached, a sudden plunge into the pocket of 
sovereigns would pay the postboys, another behind him 
would render up the completed pages, and a third into 
the pocket on the other side wouKl give him the fresh 
paper to carry forward the inexorable, unremitting work. 
At this period there was a large sheet started in which 
all the speeches of Parliament were* reported verbatim 
in order to preserve them for future reference — a mon- 
strous plan which fell through after a time. For this 
paper it was especially desired to have a speech of Mr. 
Stanley accurately reported upon the condition of Ire- 
land, containing suggestions for the amelioration of the 
people's suffering. It was a very long and eloquent 
speech, and took many hours in the delivery. There were 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 175 

eight reporters upon the work, each to work three- 
quarters of an hour and then to retire to write out his 
portion and be succeeded by the next. It happened that 
the roll of reporters was exhausted before the speech 
came to an end and C. D. was called in to report the 
last portions, which were very eloquent. This was on 
Friday, and on Saturday the whole was given to the 
press and the young reporter ran down to the country 
for a Sunday's rest. Sunday morning had scarcely 
dawned "when my poor father, who was a man of im- 
mense energy, surprised me by making his appearance 
The speech had come into Mr. Stanley's hands, who was 
most anxious to have it correctly given in order to have 
it largely circulated in Ireland, and he found it all bosh, 
hardly a word right, except at the beginning and the 
end. Sending immediately to the office, he had ob- 
tained my sheets, at the top of which, according to cus- 
tom, the name of the reporter was written, and, finding 
the name of Dickens, had immediately sent in search of 
me. My father, thinking this would be the making of 
me, came immediately, and I followed him back to 
London. I remember perfectly the look of the room and 
of the two gentlemen in it as I entered — Mr. Stanley 
and his father. They were extremely courteous, but I 
could see their evident surprise at the appearance of so 
young a man. For a moment as we talked I had taken a 
seat extended to me in the middle of the room. Mr. 
Stanley told me he wished to go over the whole speech, 
and if I was ready he would begin. Where would I like 
to sit ? I told him I was very well where I was and we 



176 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

would begin immediately. He tried to induce me to sit 
elsewhere or more comfortably, but at that time in the 
House of Commons there was nothing but one's knees 
to write upon and I had formed the habit of it. Without 
further pause then he began, and went on hour after 
hour to the end, often becoming very much excited, 
bringing down his hand with violence upon the desk 
near which he stood and rising at the end into great elo- 
quence. 

"In these later years we never meet without that 
scene returning vividly to my mind, as I have no doubt 
it does to his also, but I, of course, have never referred 
to it, leaving him to do so if he shall ever think fit. 

"Shiel was a small man with a queer high voice and 
spoke very fast. O'Connell had a fine brogue which he 
cultivated, and a magnificent eye. He had written a 
speech about this time upon the wrongs of Ireland, and, 
though he repeated it many, many times during three 
months when I followed him about the country, I never 
heard him give it twice the same, nor ever without being 
himself deeply moved." ' 

Mr. Dickens's imitation of Bulwer Lytton is so vivid 
that I feel as if it were taking a glimpse at the man him- 
self. His deaf manner of speaking he represents exactly. 
He says he is very brilliant and quick in conversation, 
and knows everything ! ! He is a conscientious and un- 
remitting student and worker. "I have been surprised 
to see how well his books wear. Lately I have reread 

'In Yesterdays with .luthors (sec pp. 230-31), FicKis mailc use, with re- 
visions and omissions, of this portion of his wife's diary. 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 177 

'Pelham' and I assure you I found it admirable. His 
speech at the dinner given to me just before leaving was 
well written, full of good things, but delivered exe- 
crably. He lacks a kind of confidence in his own powers 
which is necessary in a good speaker." 

Speaking of O'Connell, Mr. Dickens said there had 
been nobody since who could compare with him but 
John Bright, who is at present the finest speaker in Eng- 
land. Cobden was fond of reasoning, and hardly what 
would be called a brilliant speaker ; but his noble truth- 
fulness and devotion to the cause to which he had 
pledged himself made him one of the grandest of Eng- 
land's great men. I asked about Mrs. Cobden. He told 
me she had been made very comfortable and in a beauti- 
ful manner. After her husband's death, his affairs hav- 
ing become involved by some bad investment he had 
made, a committee of six gentlemen came together to 
consider what should be done to commemorate his great 
and unparalleled devotion to his country. The result 
was, instead of having a public subscription for Mrs. 
Cobden with the many unavoidable and disagreeable 
features of such a step, each of these gentlemen sub- 
scribed about £12,000, thus making £70,000, a suffi- 
cient sum to make her most comfortable for life. . . . 

I have forgotten to say how in those long rides from 
Edinburgh the mud dashed up and into the opened 
windows of the post-chaise, nor how they would be 
obliged to fling it off from their faces and even from the 
papers on which they wrote. As Dickens told us, he 
flung the imaginary evil from him as he did the real in 



178 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

the days long gone, and we could see him with the old 
disgust returned. He said, by the way, that never 
since those old days when he left the House of Com- 
mons as a Reporter had he entered it again. His hatred 
of the falseness of talk, of bombastic eloquence, he had 
heard there made it impossible for him ever to go in 
again to hear anyone. 

Sunday^ April ii. — Last night we went to the circus 
together, C. D., J., and I. It is a pretty building. I was 
astonished at the knowledge C. D. showed of every- 
thing before him. He knew how the horses were sten- 
ciled, how tight the wire bridles were, etc. The monkey 
was, however, the chief attraction. He was rather 
drunk or tired last night and did not show to good ad- 
vantage, but he knew how to do all the things quite as 
well as the men. When the young rope-dancer slipped 
(he was but an apprentice at the business, without 
wages, C. D. thought), he tried over and over again to 
accomplish a certain somersault until he achieved it, 
"That 's the law of the circus," said C. D. ; "they are 
never allowed to give up, and it 's a capital rule for 
everything in life. Doubtless this idea has been handed 
down from the Greeks or Romans and these people 
know nothing about where it came from. Hut it 's well 
for all of us." . . . 

.At six o'clock Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby came in to 
dinner. He seemed much revived both in health and 
spirits, in spite of the weather. . . . 

Dickens talked of Frederick Lemaitre ; he is upwards 
of sixty years old now; but he has always lived a 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 179 

wretched life, a low, poor fellow ; yet he will surprise the 
actors continually by the new points he will make. He 
will come in at rehearsal, go about the stage in an abject 
wretched manner, with clothes torn and soiled as he 
has just emerged from his vulgar, vicious haunts, and 
without giving sign or glimmer of his power. Presently 
he says to the prompter, who always has a tallow candle 
burning on his box, "Give me your candle"; then he 
will blow it out and with the snuff make a cross upon 
his book. "What are you going to do, Frederick ?" the 
actors say. "I don't know yet; you '11 see by and by," 
he says, and day after day perhaps will pass, until one 
night when he will suddenly flash upon them some won- 
derful point. They, the actors, watching him, try to 
hold themselves prepared, and if he gives them the least 
hint will mould their parts to fit his. Sometimes he 
will ask for a chair. "What will you do with it, Fred- 
erick?" He does not reply, but night after night the 
chair is placed there until he makes his point. He often 
comes hungry to the theatre, and the manager must 
give him a dinner and pay for it before he will go on. 
Fechter, from whom these particulars come, tells 
Dickens that there can be nothing more wonderful than 
his acting in the old scene of the miserable father who 
kills his own son at the inn. The son, coming in rich and 
handsome, and seeing this old sot about to be driven 
from the porch by the servant, tells the man to give him 
meat and wine. While he eats and drinks, the wretch 
sees how freely the rich man handles his gold and re- 
solves to kill him. Fechter's description, with his own 



i8o MEMORIES OF A HOSTTSS 

knowledge of Lemaitre, had so inspired Dickens that 
he was able to reproduce him again for us. 

JVednesday^ April 15. — [On returning from a read- 
ing in "Steinway Hall, than which nothing could be 
worse for reading or speaking"]: He soon came up 
after a little soup, when he called for brandy and lemons 
and made such a burnt brandy punch as has been 
seldom tasted this side of the "pond." As the punch 
blazed his spirits rose and he began to sing an old- 
fashioned comic song such as in the old days was given 
between the plays at the theatre. One song led to an- 
other until we fell into inextinguishable laughter, for 
anything more comic than his renderings of the chorus 
cannot be imagined. Surely there is no living actor 
who could excel him in these things if he chose to exert 
his ability. His renilering of "Chrush ke Ian ne chous- 
kin !!" or a lingo which sounded like that (the refrain 
of an old Irish song) was something tremendous. We 
laughed till I was really afraid he would make himself 
too hoarse to read the next night. He gave a queer old 
song full of rhymes, obtained with immense difficulty 
and circumlocution, to the word "annuity," which it 
appeared has been sought by an old woman with great 
assiduity and granted with immense i)icougruity. The 
negro minstrels have in great part supplanted these 
queer old English, Irish, and Scotch ballads, but they 
are sure to come up again from time to time. \Vc did 
not separate until 12, and felt the next morning (as he 
said) as if we had had a regular orgy. They did not 
forget, Dolby and he, to pay a proper tribute to " Mary- 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA i8i 

land, My Maryland," and "Dixie" as very stirring 
ballads. 

[After another reading, from which Dickens came 
home extremely tired] : We ran in at once to talk with 
him and he soon cheered up. When I first pushed open 
the door he was a perfect picture of prostration, his 
head thrown back without support on the couch, the 
blood suffusing his throat and temples again where he 
had been very white a few minutes before. This is a 
physical peculiarity with Dickens which I have never 
seen before in a man, though women are very subject 
to that thing. Excitement and exercise of reading will 
make the blood rush into his hands until they become 
at times almost black, and his face and head (especially 
since he has become so fatigued) will turn from red to 
white and back to red again without his being conscious 
of it. 

Friday y April 17. — Weather excessively warm, sky 
often overcast. Last evening Mr. Dickens read again 
and for the last time " Copperfield" and " Bob Sawyer." 
He was much exhausted and said he watched a man 
who was carried out in a fainting condition to see how 
they managed it, with the lively interest of one who was 
about to go through the same scene himself. The heat 
from the gas around him was intolerable. After the 
reading we went into his room to have a little soup, 
"broiled bones," and a sherry cobbler. His spirits were 
good in spite of fatigue, the thought of home and the 
memories of England coming back vividly. We, finally, 
from talk of English scenery, found ourselves in Strat- 



1 82 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

ford. He says there is an inn at Rochester, very old, 
which he has no doubt Shakespeare haunted. This con- 
viction came forcibly upon him one night as he was 
walking that way and discovered Charles's Wain set- 
ting over the chimney just as Shakespeare has described. 
"When you come to Gad's Hill, please God, I will show 
you Charles's Wain setting over the old roof." 

We left him early, hoping he would sleep, but he 
hardly closed his eyes all night. Whether he was 
haunted by visions of home, or what the cause was, we 
cannot discover, but whatever it may be, his strength 
fails under such unnatural and continual excitement. 

Saturday ^ April i8. — Mr. Dickens has a badly 
sprained foot. We like our rooms at his hotel — 47 is 
the number. Last night was "Marigold" and "Gamp" 
for the last time. He threw in a few touches for our 
amusement and a great deal of vigor into the whole. 
Afterward we took supper together, when he told us 
some remarkable things. Among others he rehearsed a 
scene described to him years ago by Dr. Eliotson of 
London of a man about to be hanged. His last hour had 
approached as the doctor entered the cell of the crim- 
inal, who was as justly sentenced as ever a wretch was 
for having cut off the end of his own illegitimate child. 
The man was rocking miserably in his chair back and 
forth in a weak, maudlin condition, while the clergyman 
in attendance, who had spoken of him as repentant and 
religious in his frame of mind, was administering the 
sacrament. The wine stood in a cup at one side untij the 
sacred words were said, when at the proper moment the 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 183 

clergyman gave it to the man, who was still rocking 
backward and forward, muttering, "What will my poor 
mother think of this?" Finding the cup in his hands, 
he looked into it for a moment as if trying to collect him- 
self, and then, putting on his regular old pothouse man- 
ner, he said, "Gen'lemen, I drink your health," and 
drained the cup in a drunken way. "I think," said 
C. D., "it is thirty years since I heard Dr. Eliotson tell 
me this, but I shall never forget the horror that scene 
inspired in my mind." The talk had taken this turn 
from the fact of a much-dreaded Press dinner which is 
to come off tonight and which jocosely assumed the 
idea of a hanging to their minds. C. D. said he had often 
thought how restricted one's conversation must become 
with a man who was to be hanged in half an hour. "You 
could not say, if it rains, 'We shall have fine weather 
tomorrow ! ' for what would that be to him ? For my 
part, I think I should confine my remarks to the times 
of Julius Caesar and King Alfred ! !" He then related a 
story of a condemned man out of whom no evidence 
could be elicited. He would not speak. At last he was 
seated before a fire for a few moments, just before his 
execution, when a servant entered and smothered what 
fire there was with a huge hodful of coal. ''In half an 
hour that will be a goodfire^' he was heard to murmur. 

Mr. Dickens has now read 76 times. It seems like a 
dream. 

Sunday^ April 19. — Last night the great New 
York Press dinner came off. It was a close squeeze with 
Mr. Dickens to get there at all. He had been taken 



i84 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

lame the night before, his foot becoming badly swollen 
and painful. In spite of a skilful physician he grew worse 
and worse every hour, and when the time for the dinner 
arrived he was unable to bear anything upon his foot. 
So long as he was above ground, however, it was a 
necessity he should go, and an hour and a half after the 
time appointed, with his foot sewed up in black silk, he 
made his way to Delmonico's. Poor man ! Nothing 
could be more unfortunate, but he bore this difficult 
part off in a stately and composed manner as if it were a 
sign of the garter he were doffing for the first time in- 
stead of a badge of ill health. The worst of it is that the 
papers will telegraph news of his illness to England. 
This seems to disturb him more than anything else. 
Ah ! What a mystery these ties of love are — such pain, 
such ineffable happiness — the only happiness. After 
his return he repeated to me from memory every word 
of his speech without dropping one. He never thinks of 
such a thing as writing his speeches, but simply turns it 
over in his mind and "balances the sentences, " when he 
is all right. He produced an immense effect on the Press 
of New York, tremendous applause responding to every 
sentence. Curtis's speech was very beautiful. "I think 
him the very best speaker I ever heard," said C. D. " I 
am sure he would produce a great effect in England from 
the sympathetic quality he possesses." I have seldom 
seen a finer exercise of energy of will than Mr. Dickens's 
attendance on this dinner. It brought its own reward, 
too, for he returned with his foot feeling better. He 
made a rum punch in his room, where we sat until one 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 185 

o'clock. After repeating his speech, he gave us an imi- 
tation of old Rogers as he would repeat a quatrain : — • 

"The French have sense in what they do 
Which we are quite without. 
For what in Paris they call goUt 
In England we call gout." 

Mr. Dolby sat at dinner near a poor bohemian of great 
keenness of mind, Henry Clapp, by name, who said some 
things worthy of Rivarol or any other wittiest French- 
man we might choose to select. Speaking of Horace 
Greeley (the chairman at the dinner), he said : "He was 
a self-made man and worshipped his creator." Of Dr. 

O , a vain and popular clergyman, that "he was 

continually looking for a vacancy in the Trinity." Of 
Mr. Dickens, that "nothing gave him so high an idea 
of Mr. Dickens's genius as the fact that he created 
Uriah Heep without seeing a certain Mr. Young (who 
sat near them), and Wilkins Micawber without being 
acquainted with himself (Henry Clapp)." Of Henry 

T that "he aimed at nothing and always hit the 

mark precisely." . . . 

This speech of Mr. Dickens will make a fine effect, a 
reactionary effect, in the country. The enthusiasm for 
him knew no bounds. Charles Norton spoke for New 
England. I had a visit from him this morning as well 
as from Mr. Osgood, Dolby, etc. C. D. lunched at the 
Jockey Club with Dr. Barker and Donald Mitchell and 
returned to dine with us. He talked of actors, artists, 
and the clergy — church and religion — but was evi- 
dently suffering more or less all the time with his foot, 



1 86 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

yet kept up a good heart until nine o'clock, when he re- 
tired to the privacy of his own room. He feels bitterly 
the wrong under which English dissenters have labored 
for years in being obliged not only to support their own 
church interests in which they do believe, but also the 
abuses of the English Church against which their whole 
lives are a continual protest. He spoke of the beauty of 
the landscape through which we had both been walking 
and driving under a grey sky, with the eager spring 
looking out among leafless branches and dancing in the 
red and yellow sap. He said it had always been a fancy 
of his to write a story, keeping the whole thing in the 
same landscape, but picturing its constantly varying 
eflfects upon men and things and chiefly, of course, upon 
the minds of men. He asked me if I had ever read 
Crabbe's "Lover's Ritlc." We became indignant over 
a tax of five per cent which had just been laid upon the 
entire proceeds of his Readings, telegraphed to Wash- 
ington, and found that it was unjust and had been 
taken off. 

Monday^ April 20. — Attended a meeting of a new 
"institution" just on foot, first called "Sorosis" and 
afterwards "Woman's League" for the benefit and 
mutual support of women. It was the first official meet- 
ing, but it proved so unofficial that I was entertained, 
and amused as well, and was able on my return to make 
Mr. Dickens laugh until he declared if anything could 
make him feel better for the evening that account of the 
Woman's League would. 

Tuesday. — I find it very difficult today to write at 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 187 

all. Mr. Dickens is on his bed and has been unable to 
rise, in spite of efforts all day long. . . . Mr. Norton 
has been here and we have been obliged to go out, but 
our hearts have been in that other room all the time 
where our dear friend lies suffering. . . . Oh ! these 
last times — what heartbreak there is in the words. I 
lay awake since early this morning (though we did not 
leave him until half-past twelve) feeling as if when I 
arose we must say good-bye. How relieved I felt to 
brush the tears away and know there was one more day, 
but even that gain was lessened when I found he could 
not rise and even this must be a day of separation too. 
When Jamie told him last night he felt like erecting a 
statue to him because of his heroism in doing his duty 
so well, he laughed and said, "No, don't ; take down one 
of the old ones instead !" 

The diary goes on to express the genuine sorrow of 
Mrs. Fields and her husband at parting from a friend 
who had so completely absorbed their affection, but in 
terms which the diarist herself would have been the 
first to regard as more suitable for manuscript than for 
print. The pages that contain them throw more light 
upon Mrs. Fields — a warm and tender light it is — 
than upon Dickens. There is, however, one paragraph, 
written after the Fieldses had returned to Boston from 
New York, which tells something both of Dickens and 
of Queen Victoria, in whose personality the public in- 
terest appears to be perpetual; and with this passage 
the quotations from the diary shall end. 



1 88 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Friday^ April 24. — After the Press dinner in New 
York Mr. Dickens repeated all his speech to me, as I 
believe I have said above, never dropping a word. " 1 
feel," he said, "as if I were listening to the sound of my 
own voice as I recall it. A very curious sensation." 
Jamie asked him if Curtis was quite right in the facts of 
his speech. He said, "Not altogether, as, for instance, 
in that matter about the Queen and our little play, 
'Frozen Deep.' We had played it many times with con- 
siderable success, when the Queen heard of it and 
Colonel Phipps ( ?) called upon me and said he wished 
the Queen could see the play. Was there no hall which 
would be appropriate for the occasion ? What did I 
think of Buckingham Palace ? I replied that could not 
be, for my daughters played in the piece and I had never 
asked myself to be presented at court nor had I ever 
taken the proper steps to introduce them there, and of 
course they could not go as amateur performers where 
they had never been as visitors. This seemed to trouble 
him a good deal, so I said I would find some hall which 
would be appropriate for the purpose and would ap- 
point an evening, which I did immediately, taking the 
(Jallery of Illustration and having it fitted up for the 
purpose. I then drew up a list of the company, chiefly 
of artists, literary and scientific men, and interesting 
ladies, which I caused to be submitted to the Queen, 
begging her to reject or add as she thought proper, set- 
ting aside forty seats for the royal party. The whole 
thing went off finely until after the first play was over, 
when the Queen sent round a request that I would come 



TAVISTOCK HOUSE THEATRE. 

UNDER THE MANAGEMENT OF MR. CHARLES DICKENS. 

Ok Tuet/th Night, Turtday, January dth, 1857, at a (juAiiTEn defobe 8 o'clock. Kill be pramltd 
AN ENTIRELY NEW 

ROMANTIC DRAMA, IN THREE ACTS, BY MU. WII.KIE COLLINS. 

THE FROZEN DEEP. 

Tht Jfachintry and I'ntpertia by Mr. Ibelasd, of the Theatre Royal, Addphi. The Vretiei \y Messrs. NAinAS, 
of Titchboume Street, JIaymaiket. Perruquicr, Mr. Wilson, of the Strand. 

THE PROLOGUE WILL DE DELIVERED BY MR. JOUN' FORSTER. 

CAVTATH EUSVlomil, of The Sea Mew .... Jin. Edivard Piaorr. 

CAPTAIN HELDINO,o/'«e ir.inrffrcr Mr. Alfred Dickens. 

LIEUTENANT CRAYFORD ........ Mr. Mark Lemon. 

FRANK ALbERSLEY Mr. Wilkie Collins. 

RICHARD WARDOUR Mr. Ciurles Dickens. 

LIEUTENANT STEVENTON Mr. Youno Charles. 

JOHN AVANT, Shipt Cook Mr. Auoustcs Eoo, A.R.A. 

BATESON) „ ,-,,£,,,.„, (Mr. EiiwARD Hooartii. 

DARKER I ^"^ "-^ ^''^ ''" ''"'■' '''"'''' • • • • } Mr. Frederick Evans. 

(Officers and Crews of Thc Sea Mew and Wanderer.) 

MRS. STEVENTON Miss Helen. 

ROSE EBSWORTH JIiss Kate. 

LUCY CRAYFORD Miss Hogarth. 

CLARA BURNHAM Miss Marv. 

NURSE ESTHER Mrs. Wills. 

MAID Miss Martha. 

THE SCENERY AND SCENIC EFFECTS OF THE FIRST ACT, BY MR. TELBIN. 

THE SCENERY AND SCENIC EFFECTS OF THE SECOND AND THIRD ACTS, BY Mr. STANFIELD, R.A. 

ASSISTED BY MR. DANSON. 

THE ACr-DROP, ALSO BY Mr. STANFIELD, B.A. 



AT THE END OF THE PLAY, HALF-AN-HOUR FOR REFRESHMENT. 



To Conclude Willi Mob. iNcuoALD'a Fsrcc, in T«o Acti, of 

ANIMAL MAGNETISM. 

(THE SCENE LS LAID m SEVILLE. ) 

THE DOCTOR Mr. CnAnLES Dickess. 

PEDRILLO Mr. Mark LF.aoN. 

THE MAIIQOIS DE LA OUARDIA Mr. YoLiia Charles. 

CREGORIO Mr. Wilkie Colllns. 

CAMILLA Mira Kate. 

JACINTHA Miss Hooarth. 

Musical Compoaer and Conductor of the Orchestra— Mr. FRANCESCO BERGER, who will 
preside at the Piano. 

CARRIAGES MAY DE ORDERED AT IIALP.PAST ELEVEN, 
000 SAVE THE QUEEN! 



FACSIMILE PLAY-BILL OF "THE FROZEN DEEP," WITH DICKENS AS 
ACTOR-MANAGER 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 189 

and see her. This was considered an act of immense con- 
descension and kindness on her part, and the Httle party 
behind the scenes were delighted. Unfortunately, I had 
just prepared myself for the farce which was to follow 
and was already standing in motley dress with a red 
nose. I knew I could not appear in that plight, so I 
begged leave to be excused on that ground. However, 
that was forgiven and all passed off well, although the 
large expense of the whole thing of course fell on me, 
which amounted to one hundred and fifty or two hun- 
dred pounds. Several years after, when Prince Albert 
died, the Queen sent to me for a copy of the play. I told 
Colonel Phipps the play had never been printed and 
was the property of a gentleman, Mr. Wilkie Collins. 
Then would I have it copied ? So 1 had a very beautiful 
copy made and bound in the most perfect manner, and 
presented to her Majesty. Whereupon the Princess of 
Prussia, seeing this, asked for another for herself. I said 
I would again ask the permission of Mr. Collins and 
again I had a beautiful with copy made great labor. 
Then the Queen sent to ask the price of the books. I 
sent word that my friend, Mr. Wilkie Collins, was a 
gentleman who would, I was sure, hear to nothing of the 
kind and begged her acceptance of the volumes. " "How 
has the Queen shown her gratitude for such favors ?" I 
said. "We have never heard anything more from her 
since that time." Good Mr. Dolby said quietly, "You 
know in England we call her 'Her Ungracious Maj- 
esty.'" Certainly one would not have believed it pos- 
sible for even a queen's nature to have become so 



I90 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

hardened as this to the kindly acts of any human being, 
not to speak of the efforts of one of her most noble sub- 
jects and perhaps the greatest genius of our time. 

If any reader wishes to follow the further course of 
the friendship between Dickens and the Fieldses, he has 
only to turn to "Yesterdays with Authors," in which 
many letters written by Dickens after April, 1868, are 
quoted, and many remembrances of their intercourse 
when the Fieldses visited England in 1869, the year 
before Dickens's death, are presented. Here it will 
suffice to quote one out of several passages in Mrs. 
Fields's diary relating to Dickens, and to bring to light 
a single characteristic little note from Dickens, not 
hitherto printed. 

On Wednesday, May 12, 1869, Mrs. Fields wrote of 
Dickens : — 

He drove us through the Parks in the fashionable 
afternoon hour and afterward to dine with him at the 
St. James, where Fcchter and Dolby were the only out- 
siders. Mrs. Collins was like one of Stothard's pictures. 
I felt this more even after refreshing my memory of 
Stothard's coloring at the Kensington Museum yester- 
day. C. D. told me that the book of all others which he 
read perpetually and of which he never tired, the book 
which always appeared more imaginative in proportion 
to the fresh imagination he brings to it, a book for in- 
exhaustiveness to be placed before every other book, is 
Carlyle's "French Revolution." When he was writing 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 191 

"A Tale of Two Cities," he asked Carlyle if he might 
see some book to which he referred in his history. 
Whereat Carlyle sent down to him all his books, and 
Dickens read them faithfully ; but the more he read the 
more he was astounded to find how the facts but passed 
through the alembic of Carlyle's brain and had come 
out and fitted themselves each as a part of the one great 
whole, making a compact result, indestructible and un- 
rivalled, and he always found himself turning away 
from the books of reference and rereading this marvel- 
lous new growth from those dry bones with renewed 
wonder. 

The note from Dickens read : — 

Gad's Hill Place 
HiGHAM BY Rochester, Kent 
Wednesday Sixth October^ 1869 

Mv DEAR Fields : — 

Delighted to enjoy the prospect of seeing you and 
yours on Saturday. Wish you had been at Birming- 
ham. Wish you were not going home. Wish you had 
had nothing to do with the Byron matter.^ Wish Mrs. 
Stowe was in the pillory. Wish Fechter had gone over 
when he ought. Wish he may not go under when he 
ought n't. 

With love, 

Ever affectionately yours, 

Charles Dickens 

1 Mrs. Stowe's unhappily historic article on "The True Story of Lady 
Byron's Life" appeared in the Atlantic Monthly for September, 1869. 



J^igbam bj |la£btster,JKtnt. 



fca.<^. 






pU<^^^^(,f^2jl^^^^ji^, Q^^^ 



Facsimile note Jrom Dickens to FieUs 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 193 

Among the papers preserved by Mrs. Fields there are, 
besides the manuscript letters of Dickens himself, many- 
letters written after his death by his sister-in-law. Miss 
Georgina Hogarth. From bits of these, and especially 
from a letter written by Dickens's daughter, while his 
death was still a poignant grief, the affection in which 
he was held in his own household is touchingly imaged 
forth. 

"All the Old World," wrote Miss Dickens, "all the 
New World loved him. He never had anything to do 
with a living soul without attaching them to him. If 
strangers could so love him, you can tell a little what he 
must have been to his own flesh and blood. It is a 
glorious inheritance to have such blood flowing in one's 
veins. I 'm so glad I have never changed my name." I 

From one of Miss Hogarth's letters a single passage 
may be taken, since it adds something of first-hand 
knowledge to the accessible facts about one piece of 
Dickens's writing which — in so far as the editor of 
these pages is aware — has never seen the light of 
print. This letter was written in the September after 
Dickens's death : 

"I must now tell you about the beautiful little New 
Testament which he wrote for his children. I am sorry 
to say it is never to be published. It happens that he ex- 
pressed that decided determination only last autumn to 
me, so we have no alternative. He wrote it years ago 
when his elder children were quite little. It is about 
sixteen short chapters, chiefly adapted from St. Luke's 
Gospel, most beautiful, most touching, most simple, as 



194 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

such a narrative should be. He never would have it 
printed and I used to read it to the little boys in MS. 
before they were old enough to read ivriting themselves. 
When Charley's children became old enough to have 
this kind of teaching, I promised Bessy (his wife) that 
I would make her a copy of this History, and I deter- 
mined to do it as a Christmas Gift for her last year, but 
before I began my copy I asked Charles if he did not 
think it would be well for him to have it printed, at all 
events for private circulation, if he would not publish it 
(though I think it is a pity he would never do that !). 
He said he would look over the MS, and take a week or 
two to consider. At the end of the time he gave it back 
to me and said he had decided never to publish it — or 
even have it privately printed. He said I might make a 
copy for Bessy, or for any one of his children, but for no 
one else, and that he also begged that we would never 
even lend the MS,, or a copy of it, to any one to take 
out of the house ; so there is no doubt about his strong 
feeling on the subject, and we must obey it. I made my 
copy for Bessy and gave it to her last Christmas. After 
his death the original MS. became rnine. .As it was never 
published, of course it did not count as one of Mr. 
Forster's MSS., and therefore it was one of his private 
papers, which were left to me. So I gave it at once to 
Mamie, who was, I thought, the most natural and 
proper possessor of it, as being his eldest daughter. You 
must come to England and read it, dear Friend ! as we 
must not send it to you ! We should be glad to see you 
and to show it to you and Mr. Fields in our own house." 



WITH DICKENS IN AMERICA 195 

Miss Hogarth must have known full well that, if this 
manuscript Gospel according to Charles Dickens was 
to be shown to anybody outside his immediate circle, 
he himself would have chosen the Charles Street friends 
from what he called — to them — his "native Boston." 



VI 

STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 

Had anyone crossed the Charles Street threshold of 
the Fieldses with the expectation of encountering within 
none but the New England Augustans, he would soon 
have found himself happily disillusioned, even at a 
time when there was no Dickens in Boston. As it was 
in reality, so must it be in these pages, if they are to ful- 
fill their purpose of restoring a vanished scene, the 
variety of which must indeed be counted among its 
most distinctive characteristics. The pages that follow 
will accordingly serve to illustrate the familiar fact that 
the pudding of a "family party" is often rendered the 
more acceptable by the introduction of a few plums not 
plucked from the domestic tree. 

Mrs. Fields once noted in her diary the circumstance 
that, when her husband came to Boston from Ports- 
mouth at the age of fourteen, and began to work as a 
"boy" in the bookshop of Carter & Hcndee, the second 
of these employers had a box at the theatre and, to keep 
his young employees happy, used constantly to ask one 
or more of them to see a play in his company. Thus 
enabled in his youth to see such actors as the elder 
Booth, Fanny Kemble and her father, and many others 
of the best players to be seen in America at the time, 
Fields acquired a love of the theatre and of stage folk 
which stood him in good stead throughout his life. A 




JAMES T. FIELDS AT FIFTEEN 
From a drawing by a French painter 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 197 

certain exuberance In his own nature must have sought 
a response in social contacts other than those of the 
straiter sect of his local contemporaries. In men and 
women of the stage, in authors from beyond the com- 
pass of the local horizon, writers with whom he formed 
relations in his double capacity of editor and publisher, 
in artists and public men outside the immediate "liter- 
ary" circle of Boston, Fields took an unceasing delight, 
shared by his wife, and still communicable through her 
journals. 

From their pages, then, I propose to assemble here a 
group of passages relating first to stage folk, and then 
to others, and, since these records so largely explain 
themselves, to burden them as lightly as possible with 
explanations. Slender as certain of the entries are, each 
contributes something to a recovery of the time and of 
the persons that graced it. 



Thomas Bailey Aldrich, says his biographer, used to 
declare in his later years, "Though I am not genuine 
Boston, I am Boston-plated." His intimate relation 
with Boston began in 1865, through the publication of 
a "Blue and Gold" edition of his poems by the firm 
of which Fields was a member, and the beginning of 
his editorship of "Every Saturday," an illustrated 
journal issued under the same auspices. His range of 
acquaintance before that time was such that when the 
"plating" process began, — it was really more like a 
transmutation of metals, — he sometimes served as a 



198 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

sympathetic link between his new Boston and his old 
New York. It was in New York, only a few weeks 
after the assassination of Lincoln, that Aldrich appears 
in the diary, fresh from seeing his friend, Edwin 
Booth. 

May 3, 1865. — An hour before we went to tea, 
Aldrich came to see us. He said he and Launt Thomp- 
son were staying with Edwin Booth alternate nights 
during this season of sorrow; that it was "all right 
between himself and the lady he was about to marry." 
Then he described to us the first night while Booth was 
plunged in agony. He said the gas was left burning low 
and the bed stood in the corner, just where he lay sleep- 
less, looking at a fearfully good crayon portrait of Wilkes 
Booth which glared at him over the gas. Launt Thomp- 
son started with the mother from New York for Phila- 
delphia, where she was going to join her daughter the 
day that John Wilkes was shot, and an extra containing 
the news was brought them by a newsboy as they 
stepped on the ferry-boat. The old woman would have 
the paper. "He was her 'Johnny' after all," said T. B. A. 

Friday. — Have seen a lady who knows the person to 
whom Booth is engaged — said that her letter telling 
him she was true passed his letter of relinquishment on 
its way to Philadelphia. She thinks these two women 
have saved Booth. "I have been loved too well," he 
said once. . . . 

Aldrich said we should not have been more aston- 
ished to hear he himself had done the terrible deed than 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 199 

he was to know Wilkes Booth had done it. "He was so 
gentle, gentler than I, and very handsome — a slight, 
beautiful figure," and (as he described the face, it was 
the Greek Antinous kind of beauty there) I could not 
but reflect how the deed may deform the man. Nobody 
said he was beautiful after he was dead, but they laid a 
cloth upon the face and said how dreadful. It has been 
a strange experience to come among the people who 
know the family. I hoped I should be spared this, but 
the soul of good in things evil God means we should all 
see. 

Sunday^ May 7. — A radiant day. Went to hear Dr. 
Bellows — a grand discourse. After service sat in his 
drawing-room and talked and then walked together. . . . 
He too has been to see Edwin Booth. The poor fellow 
said to him, "Ah ! if it had been a fellow like myself 
who had done this dreadful deed, the world would not 
have wondered — but Johnny ! !" 

Wednesday^ January 3, 1866. — Dined with the 
Grahams and went to see Booth upon the occasion of 
his reappearance. The unmoved sadness of the young 
man and the unceasing plaudits of the house, half filled 
with his friends, were impressive and made it an oc- 
casion not to be forgotten. 

September 23, 1866. — Edwin Booth and the Al- 
driches came to tea ; also Tom Beal and Professor 
Sterry Hunt of Montreal, the latter late. Booth came 
in the twilight while a magnificent red and purple and 
gold sunset was staining the bay. The schooners an- 
chored just off shore had already lighted their lanterns 



200 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

and swung them in the rigging, and the full moon cast 
a silver sheen over the scene. I hear he passes every 
Sunday morning while here at the grave of his wife in 
Mt. Auburn. He seems deeply saddened. He was very 
pleasant, however, and ready to talk, and gave amusing 
imitations — in particular of his black boy, Jan, who 
possesses, he says, the one accomplishment of forget- 
ting everything he ought to remember. One day a man 
with a deep tragic voice, " Forrestian," he said, came to 
him with letters of introduction asking Mr. Booth to 
assist him as he was about to go to England. Mr. B. 
told him he knew no one in England and could do noth- 
ing for him, he was sorry. If he ever found it possible to 
do him a service he would with pleasure. With that Mr. 
B. turned, — they were in the vestibule of the theatre — 
and entered the box-office to speak to someone there; 
immediately he heard the deep voice addressing Jan 
with "You arc with Mr. Booth." "Yes," responded Jan 
with real negro accent, "I 'm wid Mr. Booth." "In 
what capacity — arc you studying ?" " Yaas," returned 
Jan, unblushingly, " I 'se studyin'." "What are you 
upon now?" "Oh, Richelieu, Hamlet, an' a few of 
dese yer." " Ah, I should be pleased to enter into corre- 
spondence with you while I am abroad. Would you have 
any objections?" "Oh, no, no objection, no objection 
at all." "Thank you, sir; good-day, sir." With that 
they parted and Jan came with his mouth stretched 
wide with laughter. "Massa, what is 'correspond'? 
I told him I 'd correspond, what 'd he mean, corre- 
spond ?" Then Jan, convulsed with his joke, roared and 



^^/^h^^u^ 












^^U^^t^^^^^ 



Facsimile note from Booth to Mrs. Fields 



202 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

roared again. They are surely a merry race, but pro- 
voking enough sometimes. They are capable of real 
attachments, however; this man has been several 
times dismissed but will not go. Booth told everything 
very dramatically, but I was especially struck with his 
description of a man travelling with two shaggy terrier 
pups in the cars. He had them in a basket and hung 
them up over his head and then composed himself to 
sleep. Waking up half an hour later, he observed a man 
on the opposite side of the car, his eyes starting from 
his head and the very picture of dismay, as if a demon 
were looking at him. The owner of the pups, following 
the direction of the man's eyes, looked up and saw the 
two pups had their heads out of the basket. He quietly 
made a sign for them to go back and they disappeared. 
The man's gaze did not apparently slacken, however, 
but in a moment became still more horrified when the 
pups again looked out. "What *s the matter ?" said the 
owner. "What are those ?" said the man, pointing with 
trembling finger; "pray excuse mc, but I have been on 
a spree and I thought they were demons." He intro- 
duced the subject o\ the stage and talked of points in 
"Hamlet," which he had made for the first time, but 
occasionally through accident had omitted. The next 
day he will be sure to be asked by letter or newspaper 
why he omits certain points which would be so excel- 
lent to make, l/ie writer thinks. He has had a life of 
strange vicissitudes, as almost all actors. He referred 
last night to his frequent travels during childhood over 
the Allcghanics with his father, of long nights spent in 





■ 


■k J/KjK^Kt^Jnl 


»;j 




m 




% 


BfllrBdn^U'' 


1^^ ^L^^^^^^^^Br 



BOOTH Ay HAMLET 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 203 

this kind of travel ; and once in Nevada he walked fifty 
miles chiefly through snow. "Why?" said Lilian. "Be- 
cause I was hard up, Lily," he continued ; "I walked it 
too in stage boots which were too tight — it was mis- 
ery." . . . 

They had all gone by half-past ten, but we lay long 
awake thinking over poor Booth and his strange sad 
fortune. Hamlet, indeed! — although Forceythe Will- 
son says, "I have been to see Mr. Hamlet play Booth." 
Yes, perhaps when he is playing it for the 400th time 
with a bad cold, it may seem so ; indeed I found it dull- 
ish myself, or his part, I mean, the other night ; but he 
did play it once — the night ot his reappearance in New 
York. 

May 18, 1869. — Last Sunday evening Booth, Al- 
drich and his wife and sister. Dr. Holmes and Amelia 
and Launt Thompson, Leslie and ourselves took tea 
here together. In the evening came Mr. and Mrs. Emer- 
son. We did have a rare and delightful symposium. 
Booth talked little as usual, and the next night went 
round to Aldrich's and took himself off as he behaves in 
company ! ! Nevertheless he was glad to see Holmes, 
though every time Dr. H. addressed him across the table 
he seemed to receive an electric shock. 



A chance meeting between William Warren and 
Fields in a lane at the seaside Manchester is re- 
corded, with their talk, in the diary as early as 1865. 
Two entries in 1872 have to do with Jefferson, first 



204 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

alone and then with Warren. The friendship with 
Jefferson, begun so long ago, was continued until his 
death. 

Tuesday, March i8, 1872. — Left Boston for a short 
trip to New York. Jefferson the actor, famous through- 
out the world for his impersonation of "Rip Van 
WinkJe," was on the train and finding us out (or J. 
him), came to our compartment car to pass the day. 
He talked without cessation and without effort. He 
described his sudden disease of the eyes quite bravely 
and simply, from the use of too much whiskey. He said 
the newspapers had said it was the gas, and many other 
reasons had been assigned first and last; but he firmly 
believed there was no other reason than too much 
whiskey. He had taken the habit — when he was some- 
what below his ordinary physical and mental condition 
in the evening and wished to rise to the proper point 
and "carry the audience" — of taking a small glass of 
whiskey. This glass was after a time made two, and 
even three or four. Finally he was stricken down by a 
trouble of the eyes which threatened the entire extinc- 
tion of sight. His physician at once suggested that un- 
natural use of stimulants was the cause, of which he 
himself is now entirely convinced and no longer touches 
anything stronger than claret. He has played to a 
larger variety of audiences probably than almost any 
other great actor. The immense applause he received 
in England, where he played 170 consecutive nights at 
the Adelphi in London, always as "Rip," has only 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 205 

served to make him more modest, it would seem, more 
desirous to uphold himself artistically. He gave us a 
hint of his taste for fishing and described his trout-rais- 
ing establishment in Jersey ; very curious and wonder- 
ful it was. Nature preserves only one in a hundred of 
the eggs of trout to come to maturity. Mr. Jefferson 
in his pond is able to raise 85 out of 100. There seems 
no delight to him so great as that of sitting beside a 
stream on a sunny day, line in hand. 

Talking of the everlasting repetition of "Rip," he 
says he should be thankful to rest himself with another 
play, but this has been a growth and it would be a dar- 
ing thing for him to attempt anything new with a public 
who would always compare him with himself in this play 
which is the result of years of his best thought and 
strength. I think myself, if he were quite v/ell he would 
be almost sure to attempt something else. He told us 
several stories very dramatically. He is an odd, care- 
lessly dressed little mortal, a cross between Charles 
Lamb and Grimaldi, but we have seldom passed a more 
delightful day of talk than with him. The hours abso- 
lutely fled away. 

Wednesday , May 22, 1872. — Mr. Longfellow, Dr. 
Holmes, and Jefferson and Warren, the two first come- 
dians of our time, dined here. The hour was three 
o'clock, to accommodate the two professional gentlemen. 
The hours until three, with the exception of two visits 
(Miss Sara Clarke and Miss Wainwright in spite of say- 
ing "engaged"), were occupied in making preparations 
for the little feast. I mean the hours after breakfast until 



2o6 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

time to dress. (Of hours before breakfast I have now-a- 
days nothing to say. I am not strong enough to do any- 
thing early, but country life this summer is to change all 
that.) Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Warren arrived first. 
Finding much to interest them in the pictures of our 
lower room, they lingered there a few moments before 
coming to the library, when we talked of Marney's pic- 
tures (Mr. J. owns some of his water-colors) and looked 
about at others. Soon Longfellow came with Jamie. 
He said he felt like one on a journey. He left home early 
in the morning, had been sight-seeing in Boston all day, 
was to dine and go to the theatre with us afterward. 

He asked Mr, Warren why a Mr. Inglis was selling his 
fine library and pictures — a question nobody had been 
able to solve. Mr. Inglis is, however, in some way con- 
nected with the stage, and Warren told us it was because 
he had been arrested with Mr. Harvey Parker and 
others and condemned to be thrown in the House of 
Correction, for selling liquor. His money protected him 
from the rigor of the law, but the disgrace remained. His 
children felt it much and he was going to Europe at 
least for a season. We could not help feeling the injus- 
tice of this when we remembered the myriad liijuor 
shops for the poor all over the town, with which no one 
interferes. 

Mr. Jefferson was deeply interested in our pictures of 
the players by Zanafois. Dr. Holmes came in, talked a 
littJe at my suggestion about Anne Whitney's bust of 
Keats, which he appears to know nothing about artis- 
tically (I observed the same lack of knowledge in Emer- 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 207 

son), but he criticised the hair. He said he supposed 
nothing was known about Keats's hair, so it might as 
well be one way as another. I told him on the contrary 
I owned some of it ; whereat I got it out, and he went 
off in a little episode about an essay which he had some- 
times thought of writing about hair. He has a machine 
by which the size of a hair can be measured and re- 
corded. This he would like to use, and make a note of 
comparison between the hairs of "G. W. " (as he laugh- 
ingly called Washington), Jefferson, Milton, and other 
celebrities of the earth. He thought it might be very 
curious to discover the difference in quality. 

We were soon seated at the table (only six all told) 
where the conversation never flagged. Longfellow prop- 
erly began it by saying he thought Mr. Charles Mathews 
was entirely unjust to Mr. Forrest as King Lear. He 
considered Mr. Forrest's rendering of the part, and he 
sat through the whole, as fine and close to nature. He 
could not understand Mr. Mathews's underrating it as 
he did. Of course the other two gentlemen could say 
nothing more than the difficulty Mr. Mathews from 
his nature would have in estimating at its proper worth 
anything Mr. For.rest might do, their idea of Art being 
so dissimilar. Here arose the question if one actor was a 
good judge of another. Jefferson said he sometimes 
thought actors very bad judges — indeed he preferred 
to be judged by an audience inspired by feeUng rather 
than by one intellectually critical. 

Jefferson has a clear blue eye, very fine and bright 
and sweet. Longfellow thinks his mouth a very weak 



2o8 MEMORIES OK A llUSl ESS 

one, and certainly his face is not impressive. Warren 
appears a man of finer intellect and more wit. He had 
many witty things to say and his little tales were always 
dramatically given. Dr. Holmes could not seem to re- 
cover from the idea that Jefferson had made a fortune 
out of one play and that he never played but one. "I 
hear, Mr. Jefferson," he said, when he first came in, 
"that you have been playing the same play ever since 
you came here." (He has been playing the same for a 
dozen years, I believe, nearly — and has been here three 
weeks!) Jefferson could hardly help laughing as he as- 
sured him that for the space of three weeks he had given 
the same every night. Dr. Holmes had a way at the 
table of talking of "you actors," "you gentlemen of the 
stage," until I saw Longfellow was quite disturbed at 
the unsympathetic unmanncrliness of it, in appearance, 
and tried to talk more than ever in a different strain. 

After I left the table, which I did because I thought 
they might like to smoke, Jamie sent for Parsons's 
poems and read them some of the finest. Of course the 
talk was wittier and quicker as the time came to sep- 
arate, but I cannot report upon it. The impression the 
two actors left upon me, however, was rather that of 
men who enjoyed coming up to the surface to breathe a 
natural air seldom vouchsafed to them than of men 
sparring with their wits — they are affectionate, gentle, 
subdued gentlemen and a noble contrast to the self- 
opinionated ignorance which we often meet in society. 
Dr. Holmes was, however, the wit of the occasion, as he 
always is, and everybody richly enjoyed his sallies. 




JEFFERSON IN THE BETROTHAL SCENE OF "RIP VAN WINKLE" 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 209 

They stayed until the last moment — indeed I do not 
see how they got to their two theatres in time to dress. 
It must have been, as they say of eggs, a "hard scrab- 
ble." We went afterward — we four — to see a new 
actor, Raymond, play "Colleen Bawn" at the Globe — 
pretty play, though very touching and melodramatic, 
by Boucicault. I must confess to dislike such plays 
where your feelings are wrought to the highest pitch 
for nothing. 



The name of Fechter is familiar to the middle-aged 
through the memory of fathers, to the young through 
that of grandfathers. Readers of these pages will recall 
that Dickens, soon after reaching America in 1867, 
spoke of him in terms which caused Mrs. Fields to 
look forward with confidence to a new friendship. His 
coming to America was specifically heralded by an ar- 
ticle, "On Mr. Fechter's Acting," contributed by Dick- 
ens to the "Atlantic " for August, 1 869. When Fechter 
was in Boston, warmly received as Dickens's friend, 
he often appears in the journals of Mrs. Fields, in con- 
junction with others. 

Friday^ February 25, 1870. — Mr. Fechter came to 
lunch with Mr. Longfellow, Mr. Appleton, Mr. and Mrs. 
Dorr. He talked freely about his Hamlet, so different 
from all other impersonations. His audience here he 
finds wonderfully good, better than any other; fine 
points which have never been applauded before bring 



iio MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

out a round of applause. On the whole he appears to 
enjoy new hearers — does not understand the constant 
comparison between himself and Booth. They are al- 
ready great friends. Booth was in the house the last 
night of his performance there ; afterward he did not 
come to speak to him, and Fechter felt it ; but a letter 
came yesterday saying he was so observed that he 
slipped away as soon as possible, and could not come on 
Sunday because visitors prevented him. Better late 
than never; it was pleasant to Fechter to hear from 
Booth — with one exception : he enclosed a notice from 
some newspaper, cutting up himself horribly and prais- 
ing Fechter. "Ah ! that won't do; I shall send it back 
to him and tell him why. We are totally unlike in our 
Hamlets, and neither should be praised at the other's 
expense." 

Mr. Fcthter described minutely Mr. Dickens's at- 
tack of paralysis last year, ami, the year before, his 
prompt appearance in the box of the theatre at the last 
performance of "No Thoroughfare," which he said he 
should do; but as Fechter had not heard of his return 
from America, it was a great shock. "If it had been 
' Hamlet,' or any difficult play, I could i}ot have gone on ! 
He should not have done such a thing." He told us a 
strange touching story of M'lle Mars, during her last 
years. She came upon the stage one night to give one 
of the youthful parts in which she had once been so 
famous. When she appeared, some heartless wretch 
threw her a wreath of immortelles, as if for her grave. 
She was so shocked that the drops stood on her brow. 




^:^/^ 



A NAST CARTOON OF DICKENS AND FECHTER 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 211 

the rouge fell from her cheeks, and she stood motionless 
before the audience, a picture of age and misery. She 
could not continue her part. 

He spoke with intense enthusiasm of Frederick 
Lemaitre, much as I have heard Mr. Dickens do. "The 
second-class actors were always arguing with him (only 
second-class people argue) and saying, 'Why do you 
wish me to stand here, Frederick ?' *I don't know,' he 
would say, 'only do it.'" 

Mr. Appleton was deeply interested in the fact that 
Shakespeare proved himself such a believer in ghosts, 
as "Hamlet" shows, and would like to push the sub- 
ject farther, Mr. Fechter evidently finding much to say 
on this topic also. Mr. Longfellow was interested to ask 
about the Dumas, pere et fih. Mr. Fechter has known 
them well and has many queer stories to tell of their 
relation to each other. Lefils calls mon pere^ " my young- 
est child born many years ago," and the father usually 
introduces the son as M. Dumas, mon pere. The motto 
on Fechter's note paper is very curious and a type of the 
man — *' Faiblesse vaut vice." Mr. Longfellow spoke 
again of Mr. Dickens's restlessness, of his terrible sad- 
ness. "Yes, yes," said Fechter, "all his fame goes for 
nothing." . . . 

Jamie is so weak that he went to sleep almost as soon 
as they were gone. God knows what it all means ; I do 
not. 

It is odd that Fechter's eyes should be brown after all. 
They look so light in the play. He is a round little man, 
naturally friendly, spontaneous. We do not know what 



212 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

his life has been, and we will not ask ; that does not rest 
with us; but he is a very fine artist. His imitation of 
Mr. Dickens, as he sat on the lawn watching him at 
work, or as he joined him coming from his desk at lunch- 
time with tears on his cheek and a smile on his mouth, 
was very close to the life and delightful. 

Mr. Longfellow did not talk much, not as much as the 
last time he was here, but he was lovely and kind.' He 
brought a coin of the French Republic which had been 
touched by French wit, Liherti x (point), Egal'itc x 
(point), Fratcrmtt x (point). \\\A more to the same 
effect, without altering the coin. 

Appleton has just bought a new Troyon, wliich he 
says he shall lend me for a week. 

At the end of the following August there is a record of 
a talk with Fechter on the boat from Boston to Nahant, 
where he and the Fieldses dined with Longfellow, 
Dickens had died in the June just past, and Fechter had 
much to say of him and his family life. "Day by day," 
wrote Mrs. Fields, "I am grateful to think of him at 
rest." The little party at Nahant is described. 

•On April 20, 1870, Ivongfcllow wrote to Fields (Sec Ijje oj Utnry ICads- 
vaorth Ijonfjellow^ etc., edited by Samuel Longfellow, III, I48) ; — 

"Sumc Kngli&h poet has said or sung: 

'At the close of the day, when the hamlet is still, 
And mortals the sweets of forget fulness prove." 

"I wish Hamlet would be still ! I wish I coulil prove the sweets of forgct- 
fulness ! I wish Fechter would depart into infinite space, and 'leave, oh, leave 
me to repose!' When will this disturbing star disappear, and suffer the 
domestic planetary system to move on in the ordinary course and keep time 
with the old clock in the corner ?" 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 213 

We found dear Longfellow looking through a glass to 
espy our approach, and all his dear little girls and 
Ernest and his wife and Appleton, who whisked me 
away from the dinner-table to his studio where he 
had some really good sketches. The conversation at 
table was half French, Longfellow and Appleton both 
finding it agreeable to recall the foreign scenes by 
the foreign tongue. But except a queer imitation of 
John Forster, by Fechter, I do not remember any 
quotable talk. F. said Forster always looked at every- 
body as if regarding their qualifications for a lunatic 
asylum (he is commissioner of lunacy), saying to him- 
self, "Well, I'll let you off today ^ but tomorrow you 
must certainly go and be shut up." He describes For- 
ster's present state of health as something very pre- 
carious and wretched. 

November 14, 1870. — Monday night went to see 
Fechter in "Claude Melnotte." Longfellow and his 
daughter Edith sat in the box adjoining ours. It was 
the stage box where they were sheltered from observa- 
tion ; ours was the box next it, to be sure, but accessible 
to all eyes. During the curtain Longfellow came into 
our box ; Mrs. Holmes and Mrs. Andrew were with me, 
both plain ladies dressed in mourning. His advent 
caused a little rustle of curiosity to ripple over the 
house. Longfellow was never looking finer than he is 
today. His white hair and deep blue eyes and kind 
face make his presence a benediction wherever he 
goes — of such men one cannot help feeling what Dr. 
Putnam so well expressed last Sunday in speaking 



214 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

of the presence of our Lord at a feast. "He rewarded 
the hospitality of his friends by his presence." 

Longfellow brought an illegible scrawl in his hand 
which Parsons had written from London to Lunt. He 
told me also of having lately received a photograph 
from Virginia of a young woman, and written under it 
were the words, "What fault can be found with this?" 
He said he thought of replying, "The fault of too great 
youth." It certainly could not be agreeable to him to 
sit in the eye of the audience as he did ; but he was very 
talkative and pleasant, expressed his disappointment at 
not having us at his Nilsson dinner, but his family 
were too many for him ; said how he liked her for her 
frankness ; told me of the old impressario Garrett, the 
Jew, coming without invitation and certainly without 
being wanted (as it sent "his children upstairs to 
dine"); and then, as the play was about to begin, he 
withdrew. He was much amused and disgusted by the 
platitudes of the play. Returned to his own box, Jamie 
said he laughed immoderately over the absurdities of it 
as it continued. He tooted as the instruments tooted 
and spouted as the second-rate actors spouted, all of 
which was highly amusing to Edith, who was weeping 
over the unhappy lovers, utterly absorbed in the play. 
Mrs. Holmes and Mrs. Andrew, too, were full of tears, 
ami I found it no use attempting to say anything more 
during the evening. 

Fcchter was indeed marvellous. He raised the play 
into something human, something exquisite whenever 
he was upon the stage. His terrible earnestness sweeps 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 215 

the audience utterly away. But he is not the player for 
the million. 

Sunday evening^ December 11, 1870. — Went to Mr. 
Bartol's and met Mr. Collyer. He was pleased to hear 
what Fechter said of him Saturday night (by the by we 
met Fechter at Mrs. Dorr's dinner on Saturday), that 
he singled him out, found him a capital audience, and 
played to him. It was a fine house on Saturday and 
Fechter played '' Don Caesar." It was never played bet- 
ter. Curtis was there, and fine company. Fechter was 
graceful and saucy too in talk at dinner — just right 
for the occasion. 

Monday^ December 19. — I have just returned from 
seeing Fechter in "Ruy Bias." The public has just 
received the news that he is to leave the Globe Theatre 
and Boston in four weeks. The result was an enormous 
house, and the most fashionable house I have seen this 
season. He played with great fire and ease, but he has a 
wretched cold and his pronunciation was so thick and 
French (as it is apt to be when he is excited) that I 
could often hardly catch a word. But his audience was 
determined to be pleased and they caught and ap- 
plauded all his good points. I saw but one dissenting 
spirit, that was a spoiled queen of fashion just returned 
from Europe, who saw nobody and nothing but her- 
self. . . . 

Saturday, January 7, 1871. — Dined at Mr. Long- 
fellow's with Mr. Fechter. The poet welcomed us with 
a cordiality peculiar to himself and his children, with a 
simple glad-to-see written over their faces which is 



2i6 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

worth a world of talk. We had a merry table-talk al- 
though Fechter was laboring under the unnatural ex- 
citement of his position in having lost his season at the 
Globe, broken with the proprietor Cheney who was his 
friend, and finding himself without an engagement for 
the time. Also, so mischance held the day, Miss Le- 
clercq, his only fit support, injured herself in the 
afternoon and their superb audience went away disap- 
pointed. However, the dinner went off beautifully, as it 
always must with Longfellow at the helm. There was 
some talk of poetry and the drama and J. amused them 
too with anecdotes. Then we adjourned to the room of 
Charles the East-India man, where we saw many curios- 
ities and had a very pleasant hour before leaving. Pass- 
ing through the dressing-room of our dear Longfellow, I 
was struck with seeing how like the house of a German 
student it was — a Gocthcan aspect of simplicity and 
largeness everywhere — books too are put on all the 
walls. It is surely a most attractive house. 

January ij, 1871. — Today Jamie lunched with 
Appleton. We passed the evening at Mrs. Quincy's. It 
is the great benefit to Fechter, but in consequence of 
the tickets being sold unjustly at auction, we shall not 
go. Unhappily there are rumors about town that 
Fechter is to be insulted in the theatre. I wish I could 
get word to him. I shall wait until J. gets home and 
then ask him to drive up to put F. on his guard. 

January 2j. — It proved an unnecessary alarm ! The 
evening went off well enough but unenthusiastically, 
and at last Fechter gave all the money to the poor ! 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 217 

When Mrs. Fields first met that representative of 
the once alluring art of "elocution," James E. Mur- 
doch, he was already a veteran who had twice, at 
an interval of nearly twenty years, retired from the 
stage. Two notes about him recall his robust person- 
ality. 

January 13, 1867. — I never met James E. Murdoch, 
the actor, to hear any talk until Sunday night. The 
knowledge of his patriotism, of his son who died in the 
war, and of the weary miles the father had travelled to 
comfort the soldiers by reading to them, and afterwards 
the large sums of money he had given to the country's 
cause gathered up laboriously night by night by public 
"readings" — all this I had known. Of course no intro- 
duction could have been better, yet I liked the man even 
more than I had fancied was possible. He was so modest 
and talked in such a free generous way, purely for the 
entertainment of others, I fancied, because v/e saw he 
had a severe cold on his chest. The way too in which he 
recited "Sheridan's Ride" and anything else for the 
children which he thought they would like was quite 
beautiful to see in a man of his years, who must have 
had quite enough of that kind of thing to do. His hobby 
is elocution. He is about to establish a school or col- 
lege or something of that description, whatever its 
honorable title will be, at the West ^ (the money having 
been granted in part by legislature, the other half 
to be made by his own public efforts) for the pur- 

* A contemporary definition of Cincinnati. 



21 8 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

pose of educating speakers and teaching men and women 
how to read. He has known Grant and Sheridan well, 
lived in camp with them at the same mess-table, and 
has the highest opinion of the patriotism and probity 
of both of them. There is no mistake about one thing. 
Mr. Murdoch made himself a power during the war, 
and now that is over does not cease to work, nor does 
he allow himself to presume upon the laurels he has 
won nor to brag of his own work. 

Saturday ryioniingy November i^^, 1875. — After a 
western journey, left for home. Sunday met James E. 
Murdoch in the cars at Springfield. It was about six 
o'clock A.M., but he was bound for Newton. He came 
in therefore with us, and talked delightfully until we 
parted. He is an old man but as full of nerve, vigor, and 
ripened intellect as anyone whom I have seen. His talk 
of the stage, of his disgust for Macready's book, his dis- 
gust at the manner in which Forrest treated his wife, his 
account of his own experiences, when he was glad to 
play for ^J5 a week, were deeply interesting. The better 
side of Forrest he understood and appreciated thor- 
oughly. 



The hospitalities of Charles Street were by no means 
confined to the men of the theatrical and kindred 
professions. In later years Miss Ellen Terry, Lady 
Gregory, and those other ladies associated with the 
stage who so surely found their way to Mrs. Fields's 
door when they visited Boston, were but carrying on the 



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STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 219 

traditions of the earlier decades. As the visitors came 
and went, the diary in the sixties and seventies re- 
corded their exits and their entrances. A few passages 
are typical of many. 

A portion of the notes relating to Charlotte Cushman 
will be the better understood for a preliminary remark 
upon a Boston event of huge local moment in the au- 
tumn of 1863. This was the dedication of the Great 
Organ, that wonder of the age, in Music Hall. The first 
public performance on the organ, at the ceremonies on 
the evening of November 2, were preceded by Char- 
lotte Cushman's reading of a dedicatory ode, contrib- 
uted, according to the "Advertiser" of the next day, by 
an "anonymous lady of this city." The secret of Mrs. 
Fields's authorship of this poem, which the "Adver- 
tiser" found somewhat too long in spite of its merits, 
must have been shared by some of her friends, though it 
was temporarily kept from the public. 

Sunday, September 20, 1863. — In the evening Char- 
lotte Cushman and her niece. Dr. Dewey and Miss 
McGregor, Miss Mears and Mr. W. R. Emerson, passed 
a few hours with us. Charlotte, always of athletic but 
prejudiced mind, talked busily of people and events. 
She is a Seward-ite in politics and called Dr. Howe and 
Judge Conway "ass-sy" because they said Charles 
Sumner had prevented thus far a war with England. 
She has made money during the war, but believes appar- 
ently not at all in the patriotism of the people. She is to 
give one performance for "the Sanitary" in each of the 



220 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

four northern seacoast cities, also for fun and fame. 
She can't endure to give up the stage. She is a woman 
of effects. She lives for effect, and yet doing always good 
things and possessed of most admirable qualities. She 
has warm friends. Mrs. Carl vie is extremely fond of her, 
gives her presents and says flattering things to her. 
"Cleverer than her husband," says Miss Cushman. I 
put this quietly into my German pipe and puff peace- 
fully. 

Saturday Evenings September 26, 1863. — Charlotte 
Cushman played Lady Macbeth for the benefit of the 
Sanitary Commission to a large audience. Her reading 
of the letter when she first appears is one of her finest 
points. She moves her feet execrably and succeeds in 
developing all the devilish nature in the part, but dis- 
covers no beauty. Yet it is delightful to hear the won- 
drous poetry of the play intelligently and clearly ren- 
dered. It would be impossible to say this of the man 
who played Macbeth, who talked of "encarnardine," 
and " hcat-opprcj/ brain," for "oppresst^d," besides in- 
numerable other faults and failures, which he mouthed 
too much for me to discover. Charlotte in the sleeping 
scene was fine — that deep-drawn breath of sleep is 
thrilling. . . . 

There has been an ode written to be spoken at the 
organ opening. No one is to know who wrote it. Miss 
Cushman will speak it if they are speedy enough in 
their finishing. This is of interest to many. I trust they 
will be ready for Miss Cushman. 

Monday, November 2, 1863. — Miss Dodge and Una 




FROM A CRAYON PORTRAIT OF CHARLOTTE CUSH.MAN 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 221 

Hawthorne came to dine. At 7 o'clock we all started 
for the Music Hall. Miss Cushman read my ode in a 
most perfect manner. She was very nervous about it 
and skipped something, but what she did read was per- 
fect. Her dress and manner too were dignified and beau- 
tiful. It was a night never to be forgotten. Afterward 
we had a little supper. Dr. and Mrs. Holmes, Mr. Og- 
den of New York, Dr. Upham ^ and Judge Putnam and 
Mrs. Howe were added to our other guests. Charlotte 
Cushman left early the next day and Gail Hamilton and 
I sat down and took a long delicious draught of talk. 

April 27, 1 871. — Charlotte Cushman came to see us 
yesterday. Her full brain was brimming over, and her 
rich sympathetic voice is ringing now in my ears. She 
does not overestimate herself, that woman, which is 
part of her greatness, for the word does apply to her in a 
certain way because she grows nearer to it every day. 
J. de Maistre refused the epithet "grand" to Napoleon 
because he lacked more stature — but this hand-to- 
hand fight with death over herself (loving life dearly as 
she does) has strengthened her hold upon her affection 
for life, insensibly. She grows daily wiser and nobler. 

November 13, 1871. — We all went together to Char- 
lotte Cushman's debut in Queen Katherine at the Globe 
Theatre. A house filled with her friends and a noble 
piece of acting. She spoke to every woman's heart 
there ; by this I felt the high art and the noble sympa- 
thetic nature far above art which was in the woman and 

1 Dr. J. Baxter Upham, the moving spirit in the building of the Music Hall 
and the installation of the organ. He presided at its dedication. 



222 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

radiates from her. Much of the play beside was poor, 
but Mrs. Hunt was very amusing and we laughed and 
laughed at her sallies until I was quite ashamed. J. 
went behind the scenes and talked with C. C. She was 
in first-rate condition. 

For other contacts with the stage, three brief passages 
may speak : — 

November 8, 1866. — Went to see Ristori's "Pia dei 
Tolomei" in the evening. It was pure and beautiful. 
Being R.'s benefit, she made a short speech, and ex- 
quisitely simple as it was, her fine voice and the slight 
difficulty of enunciating the English words made her 
speech one of the most touching features of the time. 

Saturday. — Morning at home. Went to see Ristori 
for the last time, as Elizabeth, perhaps her finest char- 
acterization. Longfellow and Whittier had both prom- 
ised to go with us, but the courage of both failed at the 
last moment. The house was crowded. Mr. Grau asked 
Mr. Fields to go and speak with the great actress, but 
he excused himself. 

Whittier had never been inside of a theatre and could 
not quite feel like breaking the bonds now — besides he 
said it would cost him many nights of sleep. Longfellow 
does not face high tragedy before a crowd. 

January 16, 1868. — Fanny Kemble read "The Mer- 
chant of Venice" in Boston last night — the old way of 
losing her breath when she appeared, as if totally over- 
come by the audience. We could ncjt doubt that she 




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STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 223 

felt her return deeply and sincerely, but — however, the 
feeling was undoubtedly real if short-lived, and we will 
give her credit for it. Her voice is sadly faded since the 
brilliant readings of ten years ago ; she has had much 
sorrow since then and shows the marks of it. It is inter- 
esting to compare her work with Mr. Dickens's ; he is 
so much the greater artist ! You can never mistake one 
of his characters for another, nor lose a syllable of his 
perfectly enunciated words. She speaks much more 
slowly usually, and there is a grand intonation as the 
verses sway from her lips, but one cannot be sure al- 
ways if Jessica or Nerissa be speaking, Antonio or 
Bassanio. Her face is marvellous In tender passages, 
a serenity falls upon it born of immortal youth. It Is 
beautiful enough for tears. She enjoys the wit too her- 
self thoroughly, and brought out Launcelot Gobbo with 
great unction. An enormous and enthusiastic audience 
gave her hearty welcome. Longfellow could not come 
His wife in the old days enjoyed this play too well when 
they used to go together for him to trust himself to hear 
it again. 

Monday, May 18, 1868. — Raining like all possessed 
again today. I was to have done my gardening today 
but there Is no chance yet. Walked over to Roxbury 
with J. yesterday and found everything gay with the 
coming loveliness. It has scarcely come, however. 
Jamie was much entertained by tales Mrs. Kemble's 
agent told him of that lady : how she watched an Irish 
scrubbing woman dawdle over her work, who was paid 
by the hour, and finally called her to her (she was sit- 



224 



MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 



ting at her own reading-desk in the hall), and said in 
her stately fashion, "I fear, madam, if you exert your- 
self so much over your work you will make yourself 
ill. Your health is seriously endangered by your severe 
efforts." The woman, not seeing the sarcasm, replied 
in the strongest possible brogue to the effect that 
nothing short of the direst necessity would compel 
such dreadful labor. Whereat Mrs. Kemble, with a 
l(K)k not to be reproduced, and a wink to Mr. Pugh, 
withdrew. She read "Midsummer Night's Dream" on 
Saturday p.m. We went, but found the place entirely 
without air and left after the first part. She did not 
begin with much spirit, but her voice was exquisite and 
her fun also, and her dress was an lusthetic pleasure, as 
a lady's dress should always be, but alas ! so seldom is, 
in this country. 

IVednesday^ November 9, 1870. — We have had a 
reception today for Miss Nilsson. Longfellow and 
I lenry Ward Hcccher were here, beside Perabo and many 
excellent or talented people, nearly sixty in all. It 
was a curious fact to give out seventy invitations and 
have sixty (or nearly that) present. 

Miss Nilsson, Mrs. Richardson (her attendant), Alice 
Longfellow, and ourselves sat down to lunch afterward, 
when she sang snatches of her loveliest songs and talked 
and laughed and was as graceful and merry and sweet 
as ever a beautiful woman knows how to be. She is now 
twenty-seven years old. Her light hair, deep blue eyes, 
full glorious eyes, are of the Northern type, but her 
broad intellectual brow, her beautiful teeth, and strong 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 225 

character, belong only to the type of genius and beauty. 
She is not only brave but almost imperious, I fancy, 
at times; a manner quite necessary, I say, to protect 
her from vulgar animosity and audacity. We heard her 
last night sing " Auld Robin Gray" not only with exqui- 
site feeling, but with a pronunciation of the Scottish 
dialect that appeared to us very remarkable. When we 
spoke to her of it she said, "Yes, but there is much like 
that too in the Swedish dialect. When I jfirst came up a 
peasant to Stockholm to learn to sing, I had the dialect 
very bad indeed, and it was a long time before I lost it. 
Then I went to school in France, and now my accent 
and dialect are French. When I went back home and 
talked with the French dialect, they said to me, 'Now 
Christine, don't be absurd,' but I could not help it. 
I catch everything. I have never studied English in my 
life. I am learning American fast. I have learned 'I 
guess,' and I shall soon say *I reckon' by the time 
I come back from the West." 

Vieuxtemps, the violinist, she appreciates and en- 
joys highly as an artist. Of Ole Bull she says, "He is a 
charlatan. Ah, you will excuse me, but it is true." Of 
Viardot-Garcia she has the highest admiration. Noth- 
ing ever gave her higher delight than Viardot's com- 
pliment after hearing her "Mignon." It was uncalled 
for, unexpected, and from the heart. She rehearsed 
what we recall so well, Viardot's plain face, poor figure 
— and great genius triumphant over all. Well, we 
hear poor Viardot has lost her fortune by this sad 
French war. 



2-6 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

I have set down nothing which can recall the strong 
sweet beauty of Nilsson. She is a power to command 
success — fine and strong and sweet. Her face glowed 
and responded and originated in a swift yet gentle way, 
as one person after another was presented, that was a 
study and a lesson. She neither looked nor seemed tired 
until the presentation was over, when she said she was 
hungry. "We have had no breakfast yet, nothing to 
eat all day; ah, I shall know again what it means when 
Mrs. Fields asks me to lunch at one o'clock!" with an 
arch look at me. I was extremely penitent and hurried 
the lunch, but the people could not go out of the dining- 
room. However, all was cleaned at last and we had a 
quiet cosy talk and sit-down, which was delightful. 

On Saturday she sang from "Hamlet," the mad 
scene of Ophelia. .As usual, her dress and whole appear- 
ance were of the most refined and perfect beauty, and 
her singing we appreciated even more deeply than ever. 
She has not the remote exalte nature of highest genius, 
but she is the great singer of this new time, and her 
realism is in marked sympathy with her period. 



It has already been suggested that, when Thomas 
Bailey Aldrich made his migration to Boston as editor of 
"Every Saturday," he brought into the circle of the 
Ficldses many fresh breezes from the outer world. In 
the diary of Mrs. Fields there are frequent notes re- 
vealing a friendship which lasted, indeed, long after 
the diary ceased, and up to the end of Aldrich's life. 




CHRISTIx\E NILSSON AS OPHELIA 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 227 

in 1907. Two entries — the first relating to the mete- 
oric author of "The Diamond Lens," regarded in its 
day as a bright portent in the hterary heavens, the sec- 
ond to the Aldriches themselves at the country place 
with the name which Aldrich embalmed in his excellent 
title, "From Ponkapog to Pesth" — warrant conver- 
sion from manuscript into print. 

November 9, 1865. — Aldrich told us the story of Fitz- 
James O'Brien, the able author of "The Diamond 
Lens." He was a handsome fellow, and began his career 
by running away with the wife of an English officer. 
The officer was in Lidia, and Fitz-James and the guilty 
woman had fled to one of the seaports on the south of 
England in order to take passage for America, when the 
arrival of the woman's husband was announced to them 
and O'Brien fled. He concealed himself on board a ship 
bound for New York. There he ran a career of dissipa- 
tion, landing with only sixty dollars. He went to a first- 
rate hotel, ordered wines, and left a large bill behind 
when the time came to run away. Then he wrote for 
Harpers, and one publisher and another, writing little 
and over-drawing funds on a large scale. He came and 
lived six weeks upon Aldrich in his uncle's house one 
summer when the family were away. One day he tried 
to borrow money of Harpers, and being refused he 
went into the bindery department, borrowed a board, 
printed on it, "I am starving," bored holes through 
the ends, put in a string, hung it round his neck, 
allowed his fawn-colored gloves to depend over each 



228 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

end, and stood in the doorway where the firm should 
see him when they went to dinner. A great hiugh and 
more money was the result of this escapade. Finally, 
when the war broke out, he enlisted, and this was the 
last A. heard of him for some time; but, being himself 
called to take a position on General Lander's staff, he 
was on his way to Richmond and had reached Peters- 
burg, when someone told him Fitz-James O'Brien had 
been shot dead. Then he went to the hospital and saw 
him lying there dead. 

Shortly after this, when Bayard Taylor and his wife 
were dining in a hotel restaurant at Dover, I believe, 
— it was one of the south of England towns, — they 
saw themselves closely observed by a lady and gentle- 
man sitting near them. Finally the gentleman arose 
and came to speak to Taylor, said he observed they 
were Americans, and asked if he had ever heard of 
F. J. O'Brien. "Oh, yes," said Taylor, "I knew him 
very well. He was killed in our war." Then the lady 
burst into tears and the gentleman said, "She is his 
mother!" 

I forgot to say in the course of the story that he 
borrowed once sixty-five dollars for which A. became 
responsible, and when it was not paid he sent a let- 
ter to O'B. saying he must pay it. In return O'Brien 
sent him a challenge for a duel, which A. accepted, in 
the meantime discovering that an honorable fight 
could not be between a debtor and a creditor. How- 
ever, when the time appointed arrived, O'Brien hail 
absconded. We could not repress a smile at the idea 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 229 

of A.' s fighting, for he is a painfully small gentleman. 

May 31, 1876. — Passed the day with the Aldriches 
at Ponkapog. Aldrich maintained at dinner that the 
horse railroad injured Charles Street. His wife and 
J. T. F. took the opposite ground. Finally J. said, "Well, 
the Philadelphians don't agree with you ; they have 
learned the value of horse railroads in their streets." 
"Oh, that 's because they are such Christians," said A. 
"They know whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." 

He is a queer, witty creature. When the railroad 
dropped us at Green Lodge station, a tiny place sur- 
rounded by wild green woods and bog, we found him 
sitting on a corner of the platform where he said he had 
been "listening to the bullfrog tune his violin. He had 
been twanging at one string a long time !" Aldrich was 
in an ecstasy of delight, and in truth it was a day to put 
the most untuned spirit into tune. Li the afternoon we 
floated on the beautiful pond. The whole day gave us a 
series of pictures — only thirteen miles from town, yet 
the beechwoods can be no more retired. Mr. Pierce 
owns ^QO acres, and it must be a pleasure to him, while 
he is away in Washington, to feel that someone is using 
and enjoying hisi beautiful domain; and how could it 
be half so well used and enjoyed as by the family of a 
struggling literary man ! The house they live in, which 
was going to decay, may really be considered a creation 
of Lilian's. Altogether she is very clever and Aldrich 
most fortunate and our Washington senator is doubt- 
less most content to think of the enjoyment of others 
in his domain. 



230 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Still more exotic a figure in Boston than Aldrich 
was William Morris Hunt — in spite of his temporary 
association with Harvard College and his Boston mar- 
riage. Both he and his wife are constantly to be met 
in the pages of Mrs. Fields's journals, from which they 
emerged with some frequency into her published "Bio- 
graphical Notes," even as they have reappeared, with 
others, on earlier pages of this book. 

In other places than Charles Street, Fields and Hunt 
were often meeting. One brief record of an encounter, 
at the end of a Saturday Club meeting, should surely 
be preserved, for all that it suggests of Hunt in amused 
rebellion against his surroundings. 

Sunday J Jugust 26, 1874. — Hunt came to Jamie 
when the afternoon was nearly ended and asked him to 
go up to his studio. As they went along, he said, "I 've 
made a poem ! First time I ever wrote anything in my 
life. T is n't long, only four lines, but I 've got it writ- 
ten down." Whereat then and there he pulled out his 
pocketbook and read : 

"Boston is a hilly place; 
People all are brothers-in-law. 
If you or I want something done 
They treat us then like mothers-in-law. 

"This goes to the tune of Yankee Doodle," whereat he 
sang it out on the public highway. He looked very hand- 
some, was beautifully dressed in brown velvet with a 




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Facsimile letter from Hunt to Fields 



121 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

gold chain about his neck, hut swore hke a trooper and 
was in one of his most hiwless moods. 

He gav'e J. for me a photograph of a marvellous 
picture which he calls his Persian Sybil, Anahita. I 
see his wife in it as in so many of his best works. " I 
don't mean to do any more portraits," he said. "When 
I remember how I have wasted time on an eyebrow 
because somebody's 14th cousin thought it ought to 
turn up a little more — it makes me mad ! " 

When the English painter, Lowes Dickinson, the 
father of G. Lowes Dickinson, was visiting the Fieldses 
in Boston, a photograph of Hunt's portrait of Chief 
Justice Lemuel Shaw so impressed him that he asked 
to be taken to the painter's studio. In Miss Helen M. 
Knowlton's "Art Life of William Morris Hunt" this 
circumstance is related, together with its sequel, which 
was the publication of Hunt's "Talks on Art" from 
notes made by Miss Knowlton herself. It is a surmise 
but slightly hazardous that a characteristic note found 
among the Fields papers was written apropos of Dickin- 
son's visit to Hunt : "Send 'em along — I mean Paint- 
ers," he wrote to Fields. "I have had a delightful day 
with your friend — and I know he is a painter — why ? 
because he likes what I do well and hates what I do 
that ain't worth. . . ." 



It has been seen that, as early as November, 1R6S, 
James Parton suggested that "a writer named Mark 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 233 

Twain" be engaged to contribute to the "Atlantic."^ 
In October, 1868, "F. Bret Harte" wrote to the editor 
of the "Atlantic" from San Francisco: "As the author 
of 'The Luck of Roaring Camp,' I have to thank you for 
an invitation to contribute to the 'Atlantic Monthly,* 
but as editor of 'The Overland,' my duties claim most 
of my spare time outside of the Government office in 
which I am employed. . . . But I am glad of this op- 
portunity to thank someone connected with the 'Atlan- 
tic' for its very gracious good-will toward me and my 
writings, particularly the book which G. W. Carleton 
of New York malformed in its birth. There was an 
extra kindness in your taking the deformed brat by the 
hand, and trying to recognize some traces of a parent 
so far away." 

It was in the discharge of his work as editor of the 
"Atlantic" that Fields, hospitable to practitioners of all 
the arts, entered especially into relations with writers 
whose paths might not otherwise have crossed his, and 
his wife's. Of all the young Lochinvars of the pen who 
came out of the West while Mrs. Fields was keeping her 
diary, Bret Harte and Mark Twain were the daring and 
dauntless gallants who most captured the imagination 
and have longest held it. To each of them Mrs. Fields 
devoted a numbei of pages in her diary. We shall see 
first what she had to say about Bret Harte. 

Friday, March lO, 1 87 1. — Too many days full of 

1 See ante, page iii. 



2.i!4 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

interest have passed unrecorded. Chiefly I should 
record what I can recall of Francis Bret Harte, who has 
made his first visit to the East just now, since he went 
to San Francisco in his early youth. He is now appar- 
ently about ^S years old. His mind is full of the grand 
landscape of the West, and filled also with sympathetic 
interest in the half-developed natives who are to be 
seen there, nearer to the surface than in our Eastern 
cities. He told me of a gambler who had a friend lying 
dead in the upper room of a gambling house. The man 
went out to see about having services performed. 
" Better have it at the grave," said the parson to whom 
he applied. Jim shook his head as if he feared the proper 
honors would not be paid his friend. The other then 
suggested they should find the minister and leave it 
to him. "Well," said Jim, "yes, I wish you 'd do just 
that, for I ain't much of a funeral 'sharp' myself." He 
told me also, as a sign of the wonderful recklessness 
which had pervaded San Francisco, that at one time 
there was a glut of tobacco in the market and, a block 
of houses going up at the same period, the foundations 
oj those houses were laid of boxes of tobacco. Bret Harie, 
as the world calls him, is natural, warm-hearted, with a 
keen relish for fun, disposed to give just value to the 
strong language of the West, which he is by no means 
inclined to dispense with; at ease in every society, 
quick of sense and sight. Jamie, who saw him more than 
I, finds him lovable above all. Wc liked his wife too, — 
not handsome but with good honest sense, apprecia- 
tive of him, — and two children. She is said to sing 






Facsirnik page Jrom an early letter of Bret Harte" s 



236 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

well, but poor woman ! the fatigues of that most dis- 
tressing journey across the continent, the fetes, the 
heat (for the weather is unusually warm), have been 
almost too much for her and she is not certainly at 
her best. They dined and took tea here last Friday. 

Tuesday^ September 5, 1871. — J. went to Boston. 
I wrote in the pastures and walked all the morning. 
Coming home, after dinner, came a telegram for me 
to meet J. and Bret Harte at Beverly station with the 
pony carriage. I drove hard to catch the train, but 
arrived in season, glad to take up the two good boys 
and show them Beverly shore. Stopped at Mrs. Cabot's 

returning to see Mrs. , etc. They were all glad to 

have a glimpse of Bret Harte. The talk turned a little 
upon Hawthorne, and I was much amused to hear 

Mrs. say, drawing herself up, "Yes, he was born 

in Salem, but we never knew anything about him." 
(The truth was, Mrs. was the last person to appre- 
ciate him.) . . . Fortunately Miss Howes was present, 
whose father was one of Hawthorne's best friends ; so 
matters were made clear there. We left soon and came 
on to Manchester, where, after showing him the shore, 
we sat and talked during the evening. 

Mr. Harte had much to say of the beautiful flowers of 
California, roses being in bloom about his own house 
there every month in the year. He found the cloudless 
skies and continued drought of California very hard 
to bear. For the first time in my life I considered how 
terrible perpetual cloudlessness would be! He thinks 
there is no beauty in the mountains of California, hard, 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 237 

bare, snowless peaks. Neither are there trees, nor any 
green grass. 

He is delighted with the fragrant lawns of Newport 
and has, I believe, put into verse a delightful ghost story 
which he told us.i He has taken a house of some an- 
tiquity in Newport, connected with which is the story 
of a lady who formerly lived there and who was very 
fond of the odor of mignonette. The flower was always 
growing in her house, and after her death, at two o'clock 
every night, a strong odor has always been perceived 
passing through the house as if wafted along by the 
garments of a woman. One night at the appointed hour, 
but entirely unconnected in his thought with the story 
Mr. Harte had long ago heard, he was arrested in his 
work by a strong perfume of mignonette which appeared 
to sweep by him. He looked about, thinking his wife 
might have placed a vase of flowers in the room, but 
finding nothing he began to follow the odor, which 
seemed to flit before him. Then he recalled, for the first 
time, the story he had heard. He opened the door ; the 
odor was in the hall; he opened the room where the 
lady died, but there was no odor there; until returning, 
after making a circuit of the house, he found a faint 
perfume as if she had passed but not stayed there also. 
At last, somewhat oppressed perhaps by the ghostliness 
of the place and hour, he went out and stood upon the 
porch. There his dream vanished. The sweet lawn 
and tree flowers were emitting an odor, as is common at 

1 "A Newport Romance," published in t\\c Atlantic Monthly for October, 



238 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

the hour when dews congeal, more sweet than at any 
other time of day or night, and the air was redolent of 
sweets which might easily be construed into mignon- 
ette. The story was well told and I shall be glad to 
see his poem. 

Many good stories came off during the evening, some 
very characteristic of California; ones such as that of 
an uproar in a theatre and a man about to be killed, 
when someone shouts, "Don't waste him, but kill a 
fiddler with him." Also one of the opening nights at 
the California theatre, the place packed, when a man 
who has taken too much whiskey wishes a noise ; imme- 
diately the manager, a strong executive man, catches 
him up with the help of a policeman, and before any- 
body knows the thing is done or the disturber what is 
the matter, he finds himself set down on the sidewalk 
outside in the street. "Well," said he with an oath, "is 
this the way you do business here ; raise a fellow before 
he has a chance to draw?" (referring to the game of 
poker). 

Mr. Harte is a very sensitive and nervous man. He 
struggles against himself all the time. He sat on the 
piazza with J. and talked till a late hour. This morning at 
breakfast I found him most interesting. He talked of his 
early and best-loved books. It appears that at the age 
of nine he was a lover and reader of Montaigne. Certain 
writers, he says, seem to him to stand out as friends and 
brothers side by side in literature. Now Horace and 
Montaigne are so associated in his mind. Mr. Emerson, 
he thinks, never in the least approaches a comprehen- 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 239 

sion of the character of the man. With an admiration 
for his great sayings, he has never guessed at the subtle 
springs from which they come. The pleasant acceding 
to both sides in politics, and other traits of like nature, 
gives him affinity with Hawthorne. By the way, he is 
a true appreciator of Hawthorne. He was moved to 
much merriment yesterday by remembering a passage 
in the notes, where he slyly remarks, "Margaret Fuller's 
cows hooked the other cows." Speaking of Dr. Bartol, he 
said, "What a dear old man he is ! A venerable baby, 
nothing more ! " But Harte is most kindly and tender. 
His wife has been very ill and has given him cause for 
terrible anxiety. This accounts for much left undone, 
but he is an oblivious man oftentimes to his surround- 
ings — leaves things behind ! ! 

January 12, 1872. — Bret Harte was here at break- 
fast. It is curious to see his feeling with regard to soci- 
ety. For purely literary society, with its affectations 
and contempts, he has no sympathy. He has at length 
chosen New York as his residence, and among the 
Schuylers, Sherwoods, and their friends he appears to 
find what he enjoys. There is evidently a gene about 
people and life here, and provincialisms which he found 
would hurt him. He is very sensitive and keen, with a 
love and reverence for Dickens almost peculiar in this 
coldly critical age. Bryant he finds very cold and totally 
unwilling to lead the conversation, as he should do 
when they are together, as he justly remarks, he being 
so much younger — but never a word without cart and 
horses to fetch it. 



240 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Bret Harte has a queer absent-minded way of spend- 
ing his time, letting the hours shp by as if he had not 
altogether learned their value yet. It is a miracle to 
us how he lives, for he writes very little. Thus far I 
suppose he has had money from J. R. O. & Co., but I 
fancy they have done with giving out money save for a 
quid pro quo. 

February y 1872 [during a visit to New York]. — We 
had promised to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Harte early 
and go to the theatre afterward, therefore four o'clock 
found us at their door. He welcomed us by opening it 
himself and only this reassured Jamie. We had driven 
up in a "Crystal," much to my amusement, in which J. 
had insisted I should sit until he discovered if that was 
the house. The scene was altogether comic. I shortened 
the ludicrousness as much as possible by jumping out 
and running quickly up the steps. Mrs. Harte was not 
ready to see me, but I found Mr. Barrett the actor with 
Mr. Harte in the parlor, and soon being invited upstairs, 
found Mrs. Barrett and Mrs. Harte together. We had 
a merry dinner together, the young actor evidently 
quite nervous with respect to the evening's performance. 
He went an hour before us to the play. We sat in the 
stage box; the play was "Julius Caesar." It is useless 
to deny Edwin Booth great talent, exquisite grace and 
feeling. Both the young men, the first, Barrett, a man of 
intellect, and Booth, a man of inherited grace and feel- 
ing as well as good mind, have the advantage moreover 
of being born to the stage. Their stage habits fit them 
more perfectly than those of the drawing-room and they 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 241 

walk the stage with the ease that most men do their 
own parlors. During the performance Booth invited us 
into his drawing-room ; a short carpeted way led from 
the box into the small room where he was sitting in 
Roman costume, pipe in mouth ; he rose and called 
*'Mary," as we approached, when the tiniest woman 
ever called wife made her appearance. She is an ardent 
little spark of human flame and he really looks large 
beside her. 

But his grace, his grace ! His dress too, was as usual 
perfect — more, far more than all, both the actors had 
such feeling for Shakespeare and for their parts with 
which they are filling the stage nightly, that they were 
deeply and truly enthusiastic. It was a sight to warm 
Shakespeare. 

Saturday, September 18, 1875. — Bret Harte came on 
the \ past 12 train. He came in good health, save a 
headache which ripened as the day went on ; but he 
was bubbling over with fun, full of the most natural and 
unexpected sallies. He wished to know if I was ac- 
quainted with the Cochin China hen. They had one at 
Cohasset. They had named him Benventuro (after a 
certain gay Italian singer of strong self-appreciation who 
came formerly to America). He said this hen's state of 
mind on finding a half-exploded fire-cracker and her 
depressed condition since its explosion was something 
extraordinary. His description was so vivid that I still 
see this hen perambulating about the house, first with 
pride, second with precipitation, fallen into disgrace 
among her fellows. 






MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 



He said Cohasset was not the place to live in the sum- 
mer if one wanted sea-breezes. They all came straight 
from Chicago ! ! He fancied the place, thinking it an old 
fishing village, not unlike Yarmouth. Instead of which 
they prided themselves upon never having "any of your 
sea-smells," and, being five miles from the doctor, could 
not be considered a cheerful place to live in with sick 
children. He said he was surprised to find J. T. F. with- 
out a sailor's jacket and collar. The actors among whom 
he had been living rather overdid the business; their 
collars were wider, their shirts fuller, and their trousers 
more bulgy than those of any real sailor he had ever 
observed, and the manner of hitching up the trousers 
was entirely peculiar to themselves and to the stage. 

We went to call upon the Hurlingames. In describing 
Ilarrisburg, Virginia, where he had lectured, he said a 
committee-man came to invite him to take a walk, and 
he was so afflicted with a headache that he was ready 
to take or give away his life at any moment ; so he ac- 
cepted the invitation and walked out with him. The 
man observed that Harrisburg was a very healthy place ; 
only one man a day died in that vicinity. "Oh!" said 
Harte, remembering the dangerous state of his own 
mind, "has that man died yet today ?" The man shook 
his head gravely, never suspecting a joke, and said he 
did n't know, but he would try to find out. Whereat 
Harte, to keep up the joke, said he wished he would. He 
went to the lecture forgetting all about it and saw this 
man hanging around without getting a chance to speak. 
The next morning very early, he managed to get an 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 243 

opportunity to speak to him. "I couldn't find out 
exactly about that man yesterday," he said. "What 
man?" said H. "Why, the one we were speaking of; 
the Coroner said he could n't say precisely who it was, 
but the one man would average all right." 

Harte said in speaking of Longfellow that no one had 
yet overpraised him. The delicate quality of humor, the 
exquisite fineness in the choice of words, the breadth 
and sweetness of his nature were something he could 
hardly help worshipping. One day after a dinner at Mr. 
Lowell's he said, "I think I will not have a carriage to 
return to town. I will walk down to the Square.'* " I will 
walk with you," said Longfellow. When they arrived at 
his gate, he said, he was so beautiful that he could only 
think of the light and whiteness of the moon, and if he 
had stayed a moment longer he should have put his arms 
around him and made a fool of himself then and there. 
Whereat he said good night abruptly and turned away. 

He brought his novel and play ^ with him which are 
just now finished, for us to read. He has evidently 
enjoyed the play, and he enjoys the fame and the 
money they both bring him. 

He is a dramatic, lovable creature with his blue silk 
pocket-handkerchief and red dressing slippers and his 
quick feelings. I could hate the man who could help 
loving him — or the woman either. 

In thd passages touching upon Mark Twain now to be 
copied from the journals, he is seen, not in Boston, but 

1 Probably Gabriel Convoy and Two Men of Sandy Bar. 



244 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

in Hartford. If Mrs. Fields had continued her diary 
until 1879, there would doubtless have been a faithful 
contemporaneous account of the humorist's unhappy 
attempt to be funny both in the presence and at the ex- 
pense of the " Augustans" assembled in honor of Whit- 
tier's seventieth birthday.^ But Mrs. Fields's reports 
of talk and observations under his own roof, in the 
days when his fame rested entirely upon a handful of his 
earlier books, should take their place in the authentic 
annals of an extraordinary personality. On the first of 
the two occasions recorded, Fields went alone to deliver 
a lecture in Hartford, and in answer to a post-card in- 
vitation signed "Mark," stayed in the new house of the 
Clemcnses. On the second occasion, three weeks later, 
Mrs. Fields accompanied him. After her husband's re- 
turn from the first visit she wrote: — 

April 6, 1876. — He found Mrs. Clemens quite ill. 
They had been in New York where he had given four 
lectures hoping to get money for Dr. Brown. He had 
never lectured there before without making a great deal 
of money. This time he barely covered his expenses. 
He was very interesting and told J. the whole story of 
his life. They sat until midnight after the lecture, Mark 
drinking ale to make him sleepy. He says he can't sleep 
as other people do ; his kind of sleep is the only sort for 
him — three or four hours of good solid comfort — more 
than that makes him ill ; he can't afford to sleep all his 
thoughts away. He described the hunger of his child- 

' Sec The .Itlantic Monthly and Us Makers^ pp. 7J-75. 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 245 

hood for books, how the "Fortunes of Nigel" was one 
of the first stories which came to him while he was learn- 
ing to be a pilot on a Mississippi boat. He hid himself 
with it behind a barrel where he was found by the 
master, who read him a lecture upon the ruinous effects 
of reading. "I 've seen it over and over agin," he said. 
"You need n't tell me anythin' about it ; if ye 're going 
to be a pilot on this river yer need n't ever think of 
reading, for it just spiles all. Yer can't remember how 
high the tides was in Can's Gut three trips before the 
last now, I '11 wager." "Why no," said Mark, "that 
was six months ago." "I don't care if 't was," said the 
man. "If you had n't been spiling yer mind by readin* 
ye 'd have remembered." So he was never allowed to 
read any more after that. "And now," says Mark, "not 
being able to have it when I was hungry for it, I can 
only read the Encyclopedia nowadays." Which is not 
true — he reads everything. 

The story of his courtship and marriage, too, was 
very strange and interesting. A portion of this has, 
however, leaked into the daily papers, so I will not 
repeat it here. One point interested me greatly, how- 
ever, as showing the strength of character and right- 
ness of vision in the man. He said he had not been 
married many months when his wife's father came to 
him one evening and said, "My son, would n't you like 
to go to Europe with your wife?" "Why yes, sir," 
he said, "if I could afford it." "Well then," said he, 
"if you will leave off smoking and drinking ale you 
shall have ten thousand dollars this next year and go to 



246 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Europe beside." "Thank you, sir," said Mark, "this is 
very good of you, and I appreciate it, but I can't sell 
myself. I will do anything I can for you or any of your 
family, but I can't sell myself." The result was, said 
Mark, " I never smoked a cigar all that year nor drank a 
glass of ale ; but when the next year came I found I must 
write a book, and when I sat down to write I found it 
was n't worth anything. I must have a cigar to steady 
my nerves. I began to smoke, and I wrote my book ; 
but then I could n't sleep and I had to drink ale to go to 
sleep. Now if I had sold myself, I could n't have written 
my book, or I could n't have gone to sleep, but now 
everything works perfectly well." 

He and his wife have wretched health, poor things! 
And in spite of their beautiful home must often have 
rather a hard time. He is very eccentric, disturbed by 
every noise, and it cannot be altogether easy to have 
care of such a man. It is a very loving household though 
Mrs. Clemens's mother, Mrs. Langdon, hardly knows 
what to make of him sometimes, it is quite evident. 

Thursday, April 27, 1 876. — We lunched and at 3 
P.M. were en route for Hartford. I slept, and read Mr. 
Tom Appleton's journal on the Nile, and looked out at 
the sunset and the torches of spring in the hollows, each 
in turn, doing more sleeping than either of the others, 
I fear, because I seem for some unexplained reason to be 
tired, as Mrs. Hawthorne used to say, far into the future. 
By giving up to it, however, I felt quite fresh when we 
arrived, at half-past seven o'clock, Mr. Clemens' (Mark 
Twain's) carriage waiting for us to take us to the hall 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 247 

where he was to perform for the second night In suc- 
cession Peter Spyle in the "Loan of a Lover." It is a 
pretty play, and the girl's part, Gertrude, was well 
done by Miss Helen Smith ; but Mr. Clemens' part 
was a creation. I see no reason why, if he chose to adopt 
the profession of actor, he should not be as successful 
as Jefferson in whatever he might conclude to under- 
take. It is really amazing to see what a man of genius 
can do beside what is usually considered his legitimate 
sphere. 

Afterward we went with Mr. Hammersley to the Club 
for a bit of supper — this I did not wish to do, but I was 
overruled of course by the decision of our host. We met 
at supper one of the clever actors who played in a little 
operetta called "The Artful Mendicants." It was after 
twelve o'clock when we finally reached Mr. Clemens' 
house. He believed his wife would have retired, as she 
is very delicate in health ; but there she was expecting 
us, with a pretty supper table laid. When her husband 
discovered this, he fell down on his knees in mock desire 
for forgiveness. His mind was so full of the play, and 
with the poor figure he felt he had made in it, that he 
had entirely forgotten all her directions and injunctions. 
She is a very small, sweet-looking, simple, finished 
creature, charming in her ways and evidently deeply 
beloved by him. The house is a brick villa, designed by 
one of the first New York architects, standing in a lovely 
lawn which slopes down to a small stream or river at the 
side. In this spring season the blackbirds are busy in 
the trees and the air is sweet and vocal. Inside there is 






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ISO MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

great luxury. Especially I delight in a lovely conserva- 
tory opening out of the drawing-room. 

Although we had already eaten supper, the gentlemen 
took a glass of lager beer to keep Mrs. Clemens com- 
pany while she ate a bit of bread after her long anxiety 
and waiting. Meantime Mr. Clemens talked. The quiet 
earnest manner of his speech would be impossible to 
reproduce, but there is a drawl in his tone peculiar to 
himself. Also he is much interested in actors and the 
art of acting just now, and seriously talks of going to 
Boston next week to the debut of Anna Dickinson. 

We were a tired company and went soon to bed and 
to sleep. I slept late, but I found Mr. Clemens had been 
re-reading Dana's "Two Years before the Mast" in bed 
early and revolving subjects for his "Autobiography." 
Their two beautiful baby girls came to pass an hour 
with us after breakfast — exquisite affectionate chil- 
dren, the very fountain of joy to their interesting par- 
ents. . . . 

Returning to lunch, I found our host and hostess 
and eldest little girl in the drawing-room. We fell into 
talk of the mishaps of the stage and the disadvantage of 
an amateur under such circumstances. " For instance, 
on the first night of our little play," said Mr. Clemens, 
"the trousers of one of the actors suddenly gave way 
entirely behind, which was very distressing to him, 
though we did not observe it at all." 

I want to stop here to give a little idea of the appear- 
ance of our host. He is forty years old, with some color 
in his cheeks and a heavy light-colored moustache, and 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 251 

overhanging light eyebrows. His eyes are grey and 
piercing, yet soft, and his whole face expresses great 
sensitiveness. He is exquisitely neat also, though care- 
less, and his hands are small, not without delicacy. 
He is a small man, but his mass of hair seems the one 
rugged-looking thing about him. I thought in the play 
last night that it was a wig. 

To return to our lunch table — he proceeded to speak 
of his "Autobiography," which he intends to write as 
fully and simply as possible to leave behind him. His 
wife laughingly said she should look it over and leave 
out objectionable passages. "No," he said, very ear- 
nestly, almost sternly, ^' you are not to edit it — it is to 
appear as it is written, with the whole tale told as truly 
as I can tell it. I shall take out passages from it, and 
publish as I go along in the 'Atlantic' and elsewhere, 
but I shall not limit myself as to space, and at whatever 
age I am writing about, even if I am an infant, and an 
idea comes to me about myself when I am forty, I shall 
put that in. Every man feels that his experience is un- 
like that of anybody else, and therefore he should write 
it down. He finds also that everybody else has thought 
and felt on some points precisely as he has done, and 
therefore he should write it down." 

The talk naturally branched to education, and thence 
to the country. He has lost all faith in our government. 
This wicked ungodly suffrage, he said, where the vote 
of a man who knew nothing was as good as the vote 
of a man of education and industry ; this endeavor to 
equalize what God had made unequal was a wrong and 



252 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

a shame. He only hoped to live long enough to see such 
a wrong and such a government overthrown. Last 
summer he wrote an article for the "Atlantic," printed 
without any signature, proposing the only solution of 
such evil of which he could conceive. "It is too late 
now," he continued, "to restrict the suffrage; we must 
increase it — for this let us give every university man, 
let us say, ten votes, and every man with common- 
school education two votes, and a man of superior 
power and position a hundred votes, if we choose. This 
is the only way I see to get out of the false position 
into which we have fallen." 

At five, the hour appointed for dinner, I returned to 
the drawing-room where our host lay at full length on 
the floor with his head on cushions in the hay-window, 
reading, and taking what he called "delicious comfort." 
Mrs. Perkins came in to dinner, and we had a cosy good 
time. Mr. Clemens described the preaching of a West- 
ern clergyman, a great favorite, with the smallest pos- 
sible allowance of idea to the largest possible amount of 
words. It was so truthfully and vividly portrayed that 
we all concluded, perhaps, since the man was in such 
earnest, he moved his audience more than if he had 
troubled them with too many ideas. This truthfulness 
of Mr. Clemens, which will hardly allow him to portray 
anything in a way to make out a case by exaggerating 
or distorting a truth, is a wondrous and noble quality. 
This makes art and makes life, and will continue to 
make him a daily increasing power among us. 

He is so unhappy and discontented with our govern- 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 253 

ment that he says he Is not conscious of the least emo- 
tion of patriotism in himself. He is overwhelmed with 
shame and confusion and wishes he were not an Amer- 
ican. He thinks seriously of going to England to live for 
a while, at least, and I think it not unlikely he may 
discover away from home a love of his country which 
is still waiting to be unfolded. I believe hope must dawn 
for us, that so much earnest endeavor of our statesmen 
and patriots cannot come to naught ; and perhaps the 
very idea he has dropped, never believing that it can 
bring forth fruit, will be adopted in the end for our sal- 
vation. Certainly women's suffrage and such a change 
as he proposes should be tried, since we cannot keep the 
untenable ground of the present. . . . 

It is most curious and interesting to watch this grow- 
ing man of forty — to see how he studies and how high 
his aims are. His conversation is always earnest and 
careful, though full of fun. He is just now pondering 
much upon actors and their ways. Raymond, who is 
doing the "Gilded Age," is so hopelessly given "to 
saving at the spigot and losing at the bung-hole" that 
he is evidently not over-satisfied nor does he count the 
acting everything it might be. 

We sat talking, chiefly we women, after dinner and 
looking at the sunset. Mr. Clemens lay down with a 
book and J. went to look over his lecture. I did not 
go to lecture, but after all were gone I scribbled away at 
these pages and nearly finished Mr. Appleton's "Nile 
Journal." They returned rather late, it was after ten, 
bearing a box of delicious strawberries, Mrs. Colt's gift 



254 MKMUKIi:S UV A HOSTESS 

from her endless greenhouses. They were a sensation ; 
the whole of summer was foreshadowed by their scarlet 
globes. Some beer was brought for Mr. Clemens (who 
drinks nothing else, and as he cats but little this seems 
to answer the double end of nourishment and soothing 
for the nerves) and he began again to talk. He said it 
was astonishing what subjects were missed by the Poet 
Laureate. He thought the finest incident of the Crimean 
War had been certainly ovcrlcxjkcd. That w.as the going 
down at sea of the man of war, Berkeley Castle. The 
ship with a whole regiment, one of the finest of the Eng- 
lish army, on board, struck a rcKk near the Bosphorus. 
There was no help — the bottom was out and the boats 
would only hold the crew and the other helpless ones; 
there was no chance for the soldiers. The Colonel sum- 
moned them on deck ; he told them the duty of soldiers 
was to die; they would do their duty as bravely there 
as if they were on the battle-field. He bade them shoul- 
der arms and prepare for action. The drums beat, flags 
were flying, the service playing, as they all went down to 
silent death in the great deep. 

.Afterward Mr. Clemens described to us the reappear- 
ance before his congregation of an old clergyman who 
had been incapacitated for work during twelve years — 
coming suddenly into the pulpit just as the first hymn 
was ended. The younger pastor proposed they should 
sing the old man's favorite, "Coronation," omitting the 
first verse. He heard nothing of the omission, but be- 
ginning at the first verse he sang in a cracked treble the 
remaining stanza after all the people were still. There 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 2^^ 

was a mingling of the comic and pathetic in this inci- 
dent which made it consonant with the genius of our 
host. Our dear little hostess complained of want of air, 
and I saw she was very tired, so we all went to bed about 
eleven. 

Saturday morning. — Dear J. was up early and out in 
the beautiful sunshine. I read and scribbled until break- 
fast at half-past nine. It was a lovely morning, and I 
had already ventured out of my window and round the 
house to hear the birds sing and see the face of spring 
before the hour came for breakfast. When I did go to 
the drawing-room, however, I found Mr. Clemens alone. 
He greeted me apparently as cheerfully as ever, and it 
was not until some moments had passed that he told 
me they had a very sick child upstairs. From that in- 
stant I saw, especially after his wife came in, that they 
could think of nothing else. They were half-distracted 
with anxiety. Their messenger could not find the doctor, 
which made matters worse. However, the little girl did 
not really seem very sick, so I could not help thinking 
they were unnecessarily excited. The effect on them, 
however, was just as bad as if the child were really very 
ill. The messenger was hardly despatched the second 
time before Jamie and Mr. Clemens began to talk of our 
getting away in the next train, whereat he (Mr. C.) said 
to his wife, "Why did n't you tell me of that," etc., etc. 
It was all over in a moment, but in his excitement he 
spoke more quickly than he knew, and his wife felt it. 
Nothing was said at the time, indeed we hardly observed 
it, but we were intensely amused and could not help 



i<^(i MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

finding it pathetic too afterward, when he came to us and 
said he spent the larger part of his hfe on his knees mak- 
ing apologies and now he had got to make an apology to 
us about the carriage. He was always bringing the blood 
to his wife's face by his bad behavior, and here this very 
morning he had said such things about that carriage ! 
His whole life was one long apology. His wife had told 
him to see how well we behaved (poor we !) and he knew 
he had everything to learn. 

He was so amusing about it that he left us in a storm 
of laughter, yet at bottom I could see it was no laugh- 
ing matter to him. He is in dead earnest, with a desire 
for growth and truth in life, and with such a sincere 
admiration for his wife's sweetness and beauty of char- 
acter that the most prejudiced and hardest heart could 
not fail to fall in love with him. She looked like an 
exquisite lily as we left her. So white and delicate and 
tender. Such sensitiveness ami self-control as she pos- 
sesses are very, very rare. 

May Day. — Longfellow, Greene, Alexander Agassiz 
and Dr. Holmes dined with us. This made summer, 
Longfellow said at table — that this was May Day 
enough, it was no matter how cold it was outside. 
(The wind outside had been raging all day and winter 
seemed to be giving us a last fling.) Jamie recalled one 
or two things "Mark Twain" had said which I have 
omitted. When he lectured a few weeks ago in New 
York, he said he had just reached the middle of his lec- 
ture and was going on with flying colors when he saw in 
the audience just in front of him a noble gray head and 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 257 

beard. "Nobody told me that William Cullen Bryant 
was there, but I had seen his picture and I knew that 
was the old man. I was sure he saw the failure I was 
making, and all the weak points in what I was saying, 
and I could n't do anything more — that old man just 
spoiled my work. Then they told me afterward that 
my lecture was good and all that; I could only say, 
'no, no, that fine old head spoiled all I had to say that 
night.'" 

Longfellow was quite like himself again, but the talk 
was mainly sustained by Dr. Holmes and Mr. Agassiz. 
When Dr. Holmes first came in he looked earnestly at 
the portrait of Sydney Smith. "It reminds me of our 
famous story-teller, Sullivan," he said; "it is full of 
epicureanism. The month is made J or kisses and canvas- 
backs .'' Later on in the dinner, when Mr. Agassiz was 
describing the fatigue he suffered after talking Spanish 
all day while he still understood the language very im- 
perfectly, "Why," said Holmes, "it 's like playing the 
piano with mittens on." 

There was something pathetic in the fact of this young 
man sitting here among his father's friends, almost 
in the very place his father had filled so many times — 
but his speech was manly and wise, from a full brain. 
They talked of the spectroscope as on the whole the 
most important discovery the world had known. "Well, 
what is it?" said Longfellow. "Explain it to us." (I 
was glad enough to have him ask.) Agassiz explained 
quite clearly that it was an instrument to discover the 
elements which compose the sun, and proceeded to un- 



258 MEMORIES OK A HOSTESS 

fold its working in some detail. Two men made the dis- 
covery simultaneously, one in India and one in Eng- 
land. This spectroscope has been infinitely improved, 
however, by every living mind brought to bear upon it, 
almost, since its first so-called discovery. It is so diffi- 
cult. Dr. H. said, to tell where an invention began ; you 
could go back until it seemed that no man that ever 
lived really did it — like some verses, whereupon one of 
Gray's was given as an example. The talk turned some- 
what upon the manner of putting things, the English 
manner being so poor and inexpressive compared with 
the southern natures — the French being the masters of 
expression. 

Longfellow gave a delightful account of the old artist 
and spiritualist, Kirkup, the discoverer of the Dante 
portrait, though Greene undertook to say that a certain 
NVildc was the man. I never heard anybody else have 
the credit but Kirkup, and certainly England believes 
it was he. 

I think they all had "a good time" ; I am sure I did. 



As Mark Twain, in the preceding pages may be said to 
have led the reader back into the Boston and Cambridge 
circle, so there were constant excursions of interest 
from that circle out into the world in which such a man 
as Sumner stood as the friend of such another as Long- 
fellow. For twenty-three years, from 1851 till his death 
in 1874, Sumner was a member of the United States 
Senate, and consequently was much more to be seen in 




CHARLES SU-MXER 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 259 

Washington than In the state he represented. He ap- 
pears from time to time in the pages of Mrs. Fields's 
diary, and in the two ensuing passages figures first at 
her Boston dinner-table and then in Washington-. 

Saturday^ November 18, 1865. — Last night Miss Kate 
Field and Charles Sumner dined with us. Before we 
went to dinner Charlotte Foster, the young colored girl 
whom Elizabeth Whittier was so fond of and who is now 
secretary of the Freedmen's Bureau, came in to call. 
She is very pretty and good. It is difficult nevertheless 
for her to find a boarding-place. People do not readily 
admit a colored woman into their families. I shall help 
her to find a good home. . . . 

Mr. Sumner opened the conversation at dinner by 
asking Miss Field to tell him something of Mr. Landor. 
She, smiling, said that was difficult now because she 
had talked and written so much of him that she hardly 
knew what was left unsaid. Mr. Sumner described his 
own first introduction then at the house of his old 
friend, Mr. Kenyon, in London. He had dropped in 
there by accident, but was positively engaged elsewhere 
at dinner ; before he left, however, he was able to parry 
skilfully a remark aimed at the Yankees, which tickled 
Mr. Landor and made him try to hold on and induce 
him to stay. He was obliged to go then, however, but 
he returned a few days after to breakfast, when Landor 
asked him why the body of Washington did not rest 
in the Capitol at Washington. "Because," said Mr. 
Sumner, "his family wished his ashes to remain at Mt. 



iGo MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Vernon." "Ashes," said L., "his body was not burned ; 
why do you say 'ashes,' sir?" "I quoted, 'E'en in our 
ashes live their wonted fires,' and he said nothing more 
at the time, but," added Mr. Sumner, "I have never 
used 'ashes' since." 

Kate Field said "his wife was a perfect fiend"; but 
Mr. Sumner was inclined to doubt the statement. 
"These marriages with men of genius are hard," he said, 
"because genius wins the race in the end." 

Then Kate brought the authority of Mr. Ikowning 
and others to back her statement, but, referring to Mr. 
Landor's temper, she said that while the Storys were at 
Siena passing the summer one year, the Brownings took 
a villa near by and Mr. Landor lived opposite, while she 
and Miss Isa Blagdcn went down to make the Brown- 
ings a visit. During their stay Mr. Landor fancied that 
the stock of tea lately purchased for his use was poi- 
soned, and threw it all out of the window. The Conta- 
dinc reaped the benefit of this; they came and gath- 
ered it up like a flock of doves. 

Mr. Sumner spoke of the high, very high place he ac- 
corded to Mr. Landor as a writer of prose. He had been 
a source of great admiration to him for years, he said. 
As long ago as when G. \V. Greene was living in Rome 
and first becoming a writer, he asked Mr. Sumner what 
masters of prose he should study. "Then," said Mr. S., 
"you remember his own style was bad; the sentences 
apt to be jumbled up together. I told him to read Bacoa, 
and Hooker, and all the prose of Dryden he could find 
in the prefaces and elsewhere, and Walter Savage Lan- 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 261 

dor; and my reverence for Mr. Landor as a writer of 
prose has never diminished." 

Later during the dinner, talking of his hfe abroad, Mr. 
Sumner was reminded of a letter he had received from 
John P. Hale, our minister plenipotentiary to Spain. 
He said for a number of years, while Mr. Hale was in 
the Senate, whenever appeals came from our foreign 
ministers or consuls abroad asking for increase of salary, 
Mr. Hale would jump up and say, "Gentlemen of the 
Senate, allow me to say I would engage to live at any 
point in Europe upon the salary now granted by the 
Government. It is no economy, indeed it is a great 
lack of economy, to think of raising these salaries." 

"Hereupon comes a letter from Spain urging an 
increase of salary in terms which would convulse the 
Senate with laughter after the protestations they have 
heard so often. I should like nothing better than to 
read it to them." For the lack of their presence, how- 
ever, he read it to us, and it was amusing truly, as if the 
old days and speeches were a blank. 

Mr. Sumner easily slipped from this subject into 
others connected with the Government. 

Kate Field said that Judge Russell told her that 
President Johnson was no better than a sot, and that 
the head of the Washingtonian Home (a refuge for in- 
ebriates here) had been sent for, as a man having skill 
in such cases, to try to save him. "Is this true, Mr. 
Sumner ?" she asked. Mr. Sumner said not one word at 
first; then asked, "What authority had Judge Russell 
for making such an assertion ? " Kate did not know. 



262 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

and I thought on the whole Mr. Sumner, who knew the 
man had really been sent for by the President himself, 
it is supposed for some other reason, doubted the whole 
tale. I doubted it sincerely from the first moment, 
and I wonder a man can be left to say such things. 

Sumner then continued to describe very vividly what 
he had known of Andy Johnson's behavior. When he 
left Tennessee to come to Washington to be Vice-Presi- 
dent, he travelled with a negro servant and two demi- 
johns of whiskey which he dispensed freely, drinking 
enough himself at the same time to arrive at Washing- 
ton in a maudlin condition, in which state he remained 
until after the fourth of March. He was then living at 
the hotel, and a young Massachusetts officer, who lived 
on the same floor and was obliged to pass Mr. Johnson's 
door many times a day, told Mr. S. that during the two 
days subsequent to Mr. Johnson's arrival he saw, while 
passing his room, and counted twenty-six glasses of 
whiskey go in. At length good men interfered ; they 
saw delirium tremens or some other dreadful thing 
would be the result if this continued, and old Mr. Blair 
went with Mr. Preston King and persuaded Mr. John- 
son to go down and stay at Mr. Blair's house, and he 
surrendered at discretion. It was a small house and a 
very quiet family, but they stowed Mr. Johnson away 
and Mr. King also, who was kind enough to offer to 
take care of him. Shortly after this Mr. Lincoln and 
Mr. Sumner had gone down the river in a yacht, and 
had landed at General Grant's headquarters. They 
were sitting together at two desks reading the papers 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 263 

for the day when Mr. Sumner observed a figure darken 
the door, and looking up found Mr. Johnson. "Ah, Mr. 
Vice-President, how do you do," he said, putting his 
papers aside. "Mr. President, here is the Vice-Presi- 
dent." Mr. Lincoln arose and extended his hand, but as 
Mr. Sumner thought very coldly, and after a short time 
they started again for their yacht. Mr. Johnson walked 
as far as the wharf, talking with Mr. Lincoln, but when 
they arrived there, Mr. Lincoln did not say, " Come with 
us and have lunch," or "Come at night and have din- 
ner," but bade him simply "Good-bye" there, where 
they observed him afterward watching their departure 
with Mr. King by his side, who had come to rejoin him. 

"This," said Mr. Sumner, "is all Mr. Lincoln saw 
of Mr. Johnson. One week after this time the President 
was assassinated, and they never met from that hour 
until his death." 

Mr. Sumner thinks Mr. Beecher is making a danger- 
ous and deadly mistake, and told him so. He said fur- 
ther to Mr. B. that his anxieties prevented him from 
sleeping, that he had not slept for three nights. "I 
should think so," Mr. Beecher replied, "you talk like 
a man who had been deprived of his natural rest." The 
two men have a respect for each other and talk kindly 
of each other, but they do not see things from the 
same point of view now at all. 

Friday morning^ March 21, 1872. — L. W. J. and her 
daughter met us at the cars [in New York] bound to go 
with us to Washington. A pleasant day's journey we 
had of it with their friendly faces to accompany us and 



-64 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

with Colonel Winthrop to meet us at the train. The 
evening of our arrival Jamie went at once to see Charles 
Sumner who lives in a fine house adjoining our hotel. 
Nothing could be finer than the situation he has chosen. 
He kept J. until midnight and tried to detain him still 
longer, but the knowledge that I was waiting for him 
made him insist at length upon coming away. He found 
him better in health than he had supposed from the 
newspapers, and "the same old Sumner," as Jamie 
said. 

Saturday morning I went in early with J. and passed 
the entire morning with the Senator. Several colored 
persons came in as we sat there, and those who were 
people of eminence were introduced. He talked of lit- 
erature and showed us his own curiosities which appear 
to be numberless. Jamie was called away, but he urged 
me to stay. He said he had sent a message to the Sen- 
ate which required a reply and he expected every mo- 
ment to hear the sound of hoofs on the pavement, as 
he had requested a special messenger to be sent on 
horseback. The messenger did not arrive, but I stayed 
on all the same until his carriage came to take him to 
the Capitol, when he insisted that I should accompany 
him. He showed me all the wonders of the place, not 
forgetting the doors which Crawford never lived even 
to design in clay altogether, but which his wife, de- 
siring to have the money, caused to be finished by her 
husband's workmen and foisted upon our Government. 
They are poor enough. Sumner opposed her in what he 
considered a dishonest attempt to get money, but of 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 265 

course he could not make an open opposition of this 
nature against a lady, the widow of his friend. 

Sumner's character is one of the most extraordinary 
pictures of opposing elements ever combined in one 
person. He is so possessed by Sumner that there is 
really no room for the fair existence of another in his 
world. Position, popularity, domestic happiness, health, 
have one by one been cut away from him, but he still 
stands erect, with as large a faith in Sumner and with 
as determined a look toward the future as if it beckoned 
him to glory and happiness. I suppose he must believe 
that the next turn of Fortune's wheel must give him the 
favor he has now lost ; but were he another man, all the 
honors of the state could hardly recompense him in the 
least for what he has lost. He has a firm proud spirit 
which his terrible bodily suffering does not appear to 
make falter. His health is so precarious that doubtless 
a few more adverse strokes would finish him ; but he 
has had all there are to have, one would say. His 
friends, however, uphold him most tenderly ; letters 
from dear Mrs. Child and others lay upon his table urg- 
ing him to put away all excitement and try to live for 
the service of the state. Public honor, probity, the 
high service of his country seem to be the passions which 
animate him and by which he endures. He has a mania 
for collecting rare books and pictures nowadays and it 
is almost pitiful to see how this fancy runs away with 
him and how he must frequently be deceived. The 
tragedy of his marriage would be far more tragic if it 
had left any scar (as far as mortal can discover) save 



266 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

upon his pride. I would not do a man whom I hold in 
such honor any injustice, but he never seemed in love. 

Sunday. — Not well — kept to my room in the Ar- 
lington Hotel all day, obliged to refuse to see guests 
also, and dear J. has gone alone to dine with Sumner. 
I had hoped to see his home once more and to see him 
among his peers. There is always a doubt of course, 
but especially in his state of health, whether we may 
ever meet again. If not, I shall not soon forget his 
stately carriage at the Capitol yesterday nor the store 
he sets at present upon his counted friends. 

He pointed out the great avenue named Massachu- 
setts, and the school house named after himself, with 
a just and noble pride yesterday. The trees are all 
ready to burst into leaf. Read Bayard Taylor's Nor- 
wegian story, "Lars" — very sweet and fine it is — 
just missing "an excuse for being." L. J. fills us with 
new respect and regard. Her devotion to her daughter 
is so perfect and so wise. 

Jamie returned about i 2 o'clock. There had been a 
gorgeous dinner. The guests were Caleb Cushing, 
Carl Schurz, Perley Poore, Mr. Hill, J. T. F. The serv- 
ice was worthy of the house of an English nobleman, 
the feast worthy of Lucullus. It fairly astonished J. to 
see Sumner eat. He of course sat at S.'s right. Not a 
wine, nor a dish, was left untasted and even the richest 
puddings were taken in large quantities. I thought of 
poor Mrs. Child and other devout admirers of this their 
Republican ( ! ) leader, then of Charlotte Bronte's story 
of Thackeray at dinner. Some day, said J., we shall 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 267 

take up the paper and find Sumner is no more, and it 
will be after one of these dinners. 

The talk astonished J., utterly unused as he Is to 
look behind the scenes of government. Caleb Gushing, 
a man over 70, who appears to have the vigor of 50, 
called Stanton "a master of duplicity." Galeb Gushing 
said Seward was the first man who introduced ungentle- 
manly bearing into the Gablnet. Until he came there, 
there was no smoking, no putting up of the feet, but 
always a fine courtesy and dignity of behavior was 
preserved. 



Before leaving the diaries from which so many pages 
have already been drawn, before letting the last of the 
familiar faces which look out from them fade again from 
sight, it would be a pity not to assemble a few entries 
recalling notable persons of whom Mrs. Fields made 
fragmentary but significant record. Here, for instance, 
are glimpses of Henry Ward Beecher, fresh from the 
great service he rendered to the Union cause in the 
Civil War by his speeches in England. 

Tuesday J November 17, 1863. — J. T. F. saw Mr. 
Kennard today and we heard from him the particulars 
of Mr. Beecher's landing. He came on shore in the 
warm fog which was the precursor of the heavy rain 
we have today, at 3 o'clock a.m. of Sunday. He went 
to the Parker House until day should break and Mr. 
Kennard could come and take him to the retirement 



o68 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

of Brookline, to pass the day until the train should 
leave for New York. News of his arrival getting abroad, 
a company of orthodox deacons waited upon him very 
early to invite him to preach. "Gentlemen, do you take 
me for a fool," he said, "to jump so readily into the 
harness of the pulpit even before the fatigue of the voy- 
age has worn away ?" He heard of the illness of one of 
his younger children and therefore hastened as quickly 
as possible toward home. 

The day before the one upon which he was to speak 
at Exeter Hall he awoke in the morning with a heavy 
headache; his voice, too, was seriously impaired by 
over-use. He wanted to speak, his whole heart was in 
it, yet how in this condition ? He shut himself up in the 
house all that day and hoped for better things and went 
early to bed that night. The next morning at dawn he 
awoke, he opened his eyes quickly. " Is God to suffer me 
to do this work ?" He leaped from the bed with a bound. 
His head was clear and fresh, but his voice — he hardly 
dared to try that. " I will speak to my sister tliree thou- 
sand miles away," he said, and cried, "Harriet." The 
tones were clear and strong. "Thank God !" he said — 
then speedily dressed — trying his voice again and again 
— then he sat down and wrote off the heads of his ad- 
dress. All he needed to say came freshly and purely to 
his mind just in the form he wished. The day ebbed away 
and the carriage came to take him to the hall. When 
he descended to the street, to his surprise there was a 
long file of policemen, through whom he was conducted 
because of the crowds waiting about his door. He was 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 269 

obliged to descend also at some distance from Exeter 
Hall, and he was again conducted through another line 
of police before he reached the door. The people pushed 
and cried out so that he ran from the carriage towards 
the hall ; and one of the staid policemen, observing a 
man running, cried out and caught him by the coat-tail 
saying he must n't run there, that line was preserved 
for the great speaker. "Well, my friend," said Mr. 
Beecher, "I can tell you one thing. There won't be 
much speaking till I get there." While he hurried on, 
he felt a woman lay hold of the skirts of his coat. The 
police, seeing her, tried to push her away, but she said 
to one of them, "I belong to his party." Mr. B. said, 
"I overheard the poor thing, but I thought if she chose 
to tell a lie I would not push her away ; but as I neared 
the door she crept up and whispered to me, * I am one 

of your people. Don't you remember , a Scotch 

woman who used to live in Brooklyn and go to the 
Plymouth Church ? I have thought of this for weeks 
and longed and dreamt of being with you again. Now 
my desire is heard.'" 

The rest of this wonderful night the public journals 
and his own letters can tell us of — have told us. He 
has been as it were a man raised up for this dark hour of 
our dear Country. May he live to see the promised 
land, and not only from the top of Pisgah. 

December 10, 1863. — Visit from H. W. Beecher. . . . 
Mr. Beecher did not like Mr. Browning. He found him 
flippant and worldly. To be sure he had but one inter- 
view and could scarcely judge, but had he met the man 



270 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

by chance in a company he should never have sought 
him a second time. He said of Charles Lamb that he 
always reminded him of a honeysuckle growing between 
and over a rough trellis; it would cover the stakes, it 
would throw out blossoms and tendrils, it would attract 
hummingbirds and make corners for their nests and fill 
the wide air with its fragrance. Such was C. Lamb to 
him. 

He was sure he could have liked Mrs. Browning — 
so credulous, generous, outspoken. He liked strong 
outspoken people, yet he liked serene people too; but 
then, he loved the world in its wide variety. 

He said his boy wished to be either a stage-driver or a 
missionary. His fancy was for stage-driving ; he thought 
perhaps his duty might make him a missionary. . . . 

It was such a privilege to see him back and such a 
privilege to grasp his hand, I could say nothing but be 
happy and thankful. 

A few years later a passing shape from still an earlier 
generation casts its shadow of tragic outline across the 
pages of the diary. 

Simday, January 6, 1867. — A driving snow-storm. 
Last night Jamie went to the Club ; met W. Everett, 
who said that while his father was member of Congress 
and was at one time returning from Washington to 
Boston he was stopped in the street as he passed through 
Philadelphia by a haggard man wrapped in a cloak. " I 
am Aaron Burr," said the figure, "and I pray you to 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 271 

ask Congress for an appropriation to aid me in my mis- 
ery." Mr. E. replied that the member from his own 
district was the person to whom to apply. "I know 
that," was the sad rejoinder, "but the others are all 
strangers to me and I pray you to help me." After some 
reflection Mr. Everett promised to try to do something 
in his behalf; fortunately, however, he was released by 
death before Congress was again in session. 

Then soon appears a more cheerful figure, in the 
person of the Rev. Elijah Kellogg whose lines of "Spar- 
tacus to the Gladiators" have resounded in many a 
schoolhouse. His tales of the Stowes and the family 
Bible may still divert a generation that knows not 
Spartacus. 

Thursday, January 10, 1867. — Yesterday J. fell in 
with a Mr. Kellogg, a clergyman from Harpswell, 
Maine, the author of many noble things, among the 
rest, of the "Speech of Spartacus" which is in Sargent's 
"School Speaker," a piece of which the boys are very 
fond, but the masters are obliged to forbid their speak- 
ing it because it always takes the prize. He wrote it 
while in college, to speak himself. He went to school 
with Longfellow, though he is younger than the poet, 
and the latter calls him a man of genius. He is a preacher 
of the gospel and for the past ten months has been 
speaking every Sunday at the Sailor's Bethel with great 
effect. He called to see J. and told him some queer anec- 
dotes regarding his sea-life. He dresses like a fisherman. 



272 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

red shirt, etc., while at home. He remembers Professor 
Stowe and his wife well. He says their arrival at Bruns- 
wick was looked for with eagerness by many, with some 
natural curiosity by himself. One day about the time 
they were expected he was in his boat floating near the 
pier and preparing to return to his island where he lives, 
as the tide was going down and if he delayed much 
longer he would be ashore ; but he observed a woman 
sitting on a cask upon the wharf swinging her heels, 
with two large holes the size of a dollar each in the back 
of her stockings, a man standing by her side, and sev- 
eral children playing about. At once he believed it 
must be the new professor, so he dallied about in his 
boat observing them. Presently the man cried out, 
"Hallo there, will you give my wife a sail ?" "I can't," 
he replied, "there's n(j wind." "Will you give her a row 
then?" "The tide's too low and I shan't get home." 
"Oh," said the woman, "we will pay you ; you 'd better 
take me out a little way." "No, I can't," he said. 
Presently he heard somebody say something about 
that 's being the minister and not a fisherman at all. 
"Do you think so?" said Mrs. Stowe. With that he 
dropped down into the bottom of his boat and was off 
before another word. 

He told Mr. Fields also of the professor who preceded 
Professor Stowe. He was an unmarried man with three 
sisters, all of whom were insane at times and frequently 
one of them was away from home in an asylum. One 
day the brother was away, the eldest sister being at 
home in apparently good health, when another pro- 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 273 

fessor came to visit them to whom she wished to be 
particularly polite. "What will you have for dinner,'* 
said she, "today?" "Oh! the best thing you've got,'* 
he replied. So when dinner came she had stewed the 
family Bible with cabbage for his repast. He speaks 
with the greatest enthusiasm of the beauty of that 
Maine coast. We must go there. 

Out of what seems a past almost pre-Augustan come 
these memories of N. P. Willis, a poet who suffered the 
misfortune of outliving much of his own fame. 

Thursday i January 31, 1867. — The papers of last 
night brought the news of N. P. Willis's death and that 
he was to be buried in Boston from St. Paul's Church 
today. Early this morning a note came from Mrs. Willis 
asking Mr. Fields to see Dr. Howe and Edmund Quincy, 
to ask them to be pall-bearers with himself and Colonel 
Trimble. Fortunately last night J. had seen the an- 
nouncement, and before going to Longfellow's made up 
his mind to ask Longfellow and Lowell to come in to 
assist at the ceremony of their brother-author ; he had 
also sent to Professor Holmes before the note came from 
Mrs. Willis. He then sent immediately for the others 
whom she mentioned and for a quantity of exquisite 
flowers. All his plans turned out as he had arranged 
and hoped and the poet's grave was attended by the 
noblest America had to offer. The dead face was not 
exposed, but the people pressed forward to take a sprig 
from the coffin in memory of one who had strewn many 



274 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

a flower of thought on the hard way of their lives. There 
are some to speak hardly of Willis, but usually the 
awe of death ennobles his memory to the grateful 
world of his appreciators. "Refrain ! refrain !" we long 
to say to the others who would carp. "If you have 
tears, shed them on the poet's grave." 

There had been previously an exquisite and touch- 
ing service at Idlewild where Octavius Frothingham did 
all a man could do, inspired by the occasion and the 
loveliness of the day and scene. The service here would 
have seemed cold as stone except for the gracious poets 
who surrounded the body and prevented one thought 
of chill lack of sympathy from penetrating the flowers 
with which it was covered. I could not restrain my 
tears when I remembered a few years, bnly two, and 
the same company had borne Hawthorne's body to its 
burial. Which, which, of that beloved and worshipped 
few was next to be borne by the weeping remnant ! ! 

Wednesday^ July I, 1 868. — In our walk yesterday J. 
delighted himself and me by rehearsing his memories of 
Willis. J. was at the Astor House when Willis returned 
first from Europe with his young bride. He was then the 
observed of all observers. As in those days travellers 
crossed in sailing vessels, his coming was not heralded ; 
the first that was known of their arrival was when he 
walked into the Astor with his beautiful young wife 
upon his arm. He wore a brown cloak thrown grace- 
fully about his shoulders and was a man to remind one 
of Lady Blessington's saying, "If Willis had been born 
to £10,000 a year he would have been a perfect man." 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 275 

He was then at the head of the world of literature in 
America ; his influence could do anything and his heart 
and purse were both at the service of the needy asker. 
Unfortunately from the first he never paid his debts. 
J. said he never believed the tales of Willis's dissipa- 
tion. He spent money freely even when he had it not. 
All the English folk, lords and ladies, who then came 
to see America were the guests of Willis. 

I asked what his wife was like ! "Like a seraph. She 
was lovely with all womanly attractions." 

Of the various "causes" to which Mrs. Fields and 
her husband paid allegiance, the cause of equal oppor- 
tunity for men and women cannot justly be left unmen- 
tioned. They espoused it before its friends were taken 
with the seriousness they have long commanded, and, as 
the following passage will suggest, were full of sym- 
pathy with those who fought its early battles. The im- 
pact of one of these combatants, Mrs. Mary A. Liver- 
more, a reformer in sundry fields, against the rock of 
conservatism represented by the President of Harvard 
College, is the subject of a lively bit of record. 

September 22, 1876. — At four came Miss Phelps, at 
six came Mrs. Livermore. Ah ! She is indeed a great 
woman — a strong arm to those who are weak, a new 
faith in time of trouble. She came to tea as fresh as if 
she had been calmly sunning herself all the week in- 
stead of speaking at a great meeting at Faneuil Hall 
the previous evening and taking cold in the process. 



276 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

She talked most wittily and brilliantly, beside laughing 
most heartily and merrily over all dear J.'s absurd sto- 
ries and illustrations. He told her of a woman who came 
to speak to him after one of his lectures, to thank him 
for what he was trying to do for the education of women. 
She said, "I was educated at home with my brothers 
and taught all they were taught, learning my lessons by 
their side and reciting with them until the time came for 
them to go to college. Nobody ever told me I was not 
to go to college ! And when the moment arrived and it 
dawned upon me that I was to be left behind to do 
nothing, to learn nothing more, I was terribly un- 
happy." 

"I know just how she felt," said Mrs. Livermore; 
"there was a party of six of us girls, sisters and cousins, 
who had studied with our brothers up to the time for 
going to college. We were all ready, but what was to be 
done ? We were told that no girls had entered Harvard 
thus far. We said to each other, we six girls will go to 
Cambridge and call upon President Quincy, show him 
where we stand in our lessons, and ask him to admit 
us. I was the youngest of the party. I was noted for 
being rather hot and intemperate in speech in those 
days, and the girls made me promise before we left the 
house [not to speak] — 'For as sure as you do,' they 
said, 'you will spoil all.' So I promised, and we went to 
Cambridge and found Mr. Quincy. The girls laid their 
proposition before him as clearly as they dared, by 
showing him what they had done in their lessons. ' Very 
smart girls, unusually capable girls,' he said encourag- 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 277 

ingly ; ' but can you cook ? ' 'Oh, yes, sir,' said one, ' we 
have kept house for some time.' 'Highly important,' 
he said ; and so on during the space of an hour." 

Mrs. Livermore said she found he was toying with 
them and they were as far away from the subject in 
their minds as the moment they arrived, and, forgetting 
her promise of silence, she said : " ' But, Mr. Quincy, 
what we came to ask is, will you allow us to come to 
college when our brothers do ? You say we are suffi- 
ciently prepared ; is there anything to prevent our 
admission ? ' * Oh, yes, my dear, we never allow girls 
at Harvard ; you know, the place for girls is at home.' 
'Yes, but, Mr. Quincy, if we are prepared, we would 
not ask to recite, but may we not attend the recitations 
and sit silent in the classes ? ' ' No, my dear, you may 
not.' 'Then I wish — ' 'What do you wish?' he said. 
*I wish I were God for one instant, that I might kill 
every woman from Eve down and let you have a mas- 
culine world all to yourselves and see how you would 
like that.' Up to this point the girls had been kept up 
by excitement, but there we broke down. I tried the 
best I could not to cry, but I found my eyes were get- 
ting full, and the only thing for us to do was to leave as 
soon as we could for home. We lived in the vicinity of 
Copp's Hill and I can see, as distinctly as if it were 
yesterday, the room looking out on the burial-ground 
in which we all sat down together and cried ourselves 
half-blind. 'I wish I was dead,' said one. 'I wish I had 
never been born,' said another. 'Martha, get up from 
that stone seat,' said a third ; 'you'll get cold.' 'I don't 



278 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

care if I do,' said Martha; 'I shall perhaps die the 
sooner.' We were all terribly indignant." 

I was deeply interested in this history. I was stand- 
ing over the cradle of woman's emancipation and seeing 
it rocked by the hand of sorrow and indignation. 

Other passages might be cited merely to illustrate the 
skill and industry of Mrs. Fields in reducing to narra- 
tive form the mass of reported talk of one sort or an- 
other which her husband brought home to her. A strik- 
ing instance of this is found in the full rendering of a 
story told by R. H. Dana, Jr., to Fields, at a time when 
they were discussing a new edition of "Two Years 
before the Mast." It is a long dramatic account of 
Dana's experience on a burning ship in the Pacific, 
which he told Fields he had "never yet found time to 
write down." In Charles Francis .Adams's biography 
of Dana, the bare bones of the story are preserved in a 
diary Dana was keeping during the voyage in which 
this calamity occurred. If .Adams could but have turned 
to the diary of Mrs. Fields for 1868, he would have 
found a detailed description of an episode in Dana's 
lite which might well have been included in his biog- 
raphy. 

Hut the if's of bookmaking are hardly less abundant 
than those of history. If, for a single instance, this were 
in any real sense a biography of Mrs. Fields, it would be 
necessary for the reader to explore with the compiler the 
journals and letters written during two visits the 
Fieldses made to Europe in 1859 ^"^ 1869. But this 



STAGE FOLK AND OTHERS 279 

would be foreign to the present purpose, which has not 
been either to produce a biography, or to evoke all the 
interesting persons known to Mrs. Fields, at home and 
abroad, but rather to present them and her against her 

y ^ Z/' ''/' y ^ 




From a letter of Edward Lear s to Fields 

own intimate and distinctive background. She herself 
has written, in her "Authors and Friends," of Tennyson 
and Lady Tennyson, and to the pictures she has drawn 
of them it would be easily possible to add fresh lines 
from the unprinted records — as it would be, also, to 
bring forth passages touching upon many another famil- 
iar figure of Victorian England. The roving lover who 
justified himself by singing that 

They were my visits, but thou art my home, 

Stated, in essence, the principle to which these pages 
have adhered. The frequenters of the house in Charles 
Street well knew that something of its color and flavor 



28o MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

was derived from the excursions its hostess made into 
other scenes. Yet her own color and flavor were not 
those of the visitor, but of the visited. It is a pity that 
many who would have been welcome visitors — none 
more than Edward Lear — never came. Even as it is, 
there is ample ground for laying the emphasis of this 
book upon the panorama of a picturesque social life 
chiefly as seen from within the hospitable walls of Mr. 
and Mrs. Fields. When he died in i88l, a long and 
happy chapter in her long and happy life came to its 
close. 



VII 

SARAH ORNE JEWETT 

Such a statement about Mrs. Fields as that she "was 
to survive her husband many years and was to flourish 
as a copious second volume — the connection licenses 
the figure — of the work anciently issued," almost iden- 
tifies itself, without remark, as proceeding from the 
same friend, Henry James, whose words have colored a 
previous chapter of this book. The many years to which 
he referred were, indeed, nearly thirty-four in number, 
about a third of a century, or what is commonly counted 
a generation. For a longer period than that through 
which she was the wife of James T. Fields, she was thus 
his widow. Through nearly all of this period the need 
of her nature for an absorbing affectionate intimacy was 
met through her friendship with Sarah Orne Jewett. 
It was with reference to her that Mrs. Fields, in the 
preface to a collection of Miss Jewett's letters, published 
in 191 1, two years after her death, wrote of "the power 
that lies in friendship to sustain the giver as well as the 
receiver." In the friendship of these two women it 
would have been impossible to define either one, to the 
exclusion of the other, as the giver or the receiver. 
They were certainly both sustained by their relation. 

Miss Jewett, born in South Berwick, Maine, in 1849, 
and continuously identified with that place until her 
death in 1909, first entered the "Atlantic circle" in 



282 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

1869, when she was but twenty years old, and Fields 
was still editor of the magazine. In that year a story 
by her, called "Mr. Bruce" and credited in the index 
of the magazine — for contributions then appeared 
unsigned — to "A. C. Eliot," was printed in the "Atlan- 
tic." Four years later, Consule Hovoellsy "The Shore 
House," a second story, appeared over her own name, 
the practiceof printing signatures havingmeanwhile been 
instituted. In May, 1875, the "Atlantic" contained a 
poem by Miss Jewett, which may be quoted, not so 
much to remind the readers of those stories of New Eng- 
land on which her later fame was based, that in her 
earlier years she was much given to the writing of verse, 
as to explain in a way the union — there is no truer 
word for it — that came later to exist between herself 
and Mrs. Fields. 
Thus it read : — 

TOGETHER 

I wonder if you really send 
Those dreams of you that come and go! 

I like to say, "She thought of me, 
And I have known it." Is it so? 

Though other friends walk by your side, 

Vet sometimes it must surely be, 
They wonder where your thoughts have gone. 

Because I have you here with me. 

And when the busy day is done 

And work is ended, voices cease, 
When every one has said good night, 

In fading firelight, then in peace 




SARAH ORNE JEWETT 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 283 

I Idly rest : you come to me, — 

Your dear love holds me close to you. 
If I could see you face to face 

It would not be more sweet and true; 

I do not hear the words you speak, 

Nor touch your hands, nor see your eyes : 

Yet, far away the flowers may grow 
From whence to me the fragrance flies; 

And so, across the empty miles 

Light from my star shines. Is it, dear, 
Your love has never gone away ? 

I said farewell and — kept you here. 



It was not strange that the writer of just such a poem 
should have seemed to Fields, before his death in 1881, 
the ideal friend to fill the impending gap in the life of his 
wife. He must have known that, when the time should 
come for readjusting herself to life without him, she 
would need something more than random contacts with 
friends, no matter how rewarding each such relation- 
ship might be. He must have realized that the intensely 
personal element in her nature would require an outlet 
through an intensely personal devotion. If he could 
have foreseen the relation that grew up between Mrs. 
Fields and Miss Jewett — her junior by about fifteen 
years — almost immediately upon his death, and con- 
tinued throughout the life of the younger friend, he 
would surely have felt a great security of satisfaction in 
what was yet to be. In all her personal manifestations, 
and in all her work. Miss Jewett embodied a quality of 
distinction, a quality of the true aristophile^ — to em- 



284 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

ploy a term which has seemed to me before to fit that 
small company of lovers of the best to which these ladies 
preeminently belonged, — that made them foreordained 
companions. To Mrs. Fields it meant much to stand in 
a close relation — apart from all considerations of a 
completely uniting friendship — with such an artist as 
Miss Jewett, to feel that through sympathy and en- 
couragement she was furthering a true and permanent 
contribution to American letters. To Miss Jewett, 
whose life, before this intimacy began, had been led 
almost entirely in the Maine village of her birth, — a 
village of dignity and high traditions that were her 
own inheritance, — there came an extension of in- 
terests and stimulating contacts through finding her- 
self a frequent member of another household than her 
own, and that a very nucleus of quickening human 
intercourse. To pursue her work of writing chiefly at 
South Berwick, to come to Boston, or Manchester, for 
that freshening of the spirit which the creative writer so 
greatly needs, and there to find the most sympathetic 
and devoted of friends, also much occupied herself 
with the writing of books and with all commerce of vital 
thoughts — what could have afforded a more delight- 
ful arrangement of life ? 

Even as early as 1881, the year of Fields's death. 
Miss Jewett published the fourth of her many books, 
"Country By-Ways," preceded by "Deephaven" 
(1877), "Play Days" (1878), and "Old Friends and 
New" (1879). From 1881 onward her production was 
constant and abundant. In 188 1 also began a period of 



H^^^^^^^HI^^^BSfl '"' '"VBHBI^H^BI^H^ 














1 1 1 







SARAH ORNE JEWETT 285 

remarkable productiveness on the part of Mrs. Fields. 
In that very year of her husband's death she published 
both her "James T. Fields: Biographical Notes and 
Personal Sketches," and a second edition of "Under the 
Olive," a small volume in which she had brought to- 
gether in 1880 a number of poems in which the influence 
of the Greek and English poets is sometimes manifested 
— notably in "Theocritus" — to excellent purpose. 
If Mrs. Fields had been a poet of distinctive power, the 
fact would long ago have established itself. To make 
any such claim for her at this late day would be to de- 
part from the purpose of this book. It was for the most 
part rather as a friend than as a daughter of the Muses 
that she turned to verse, the medium of utterance for so 
many of that nest of singing-birds in which her life was 
passed. In 1883 came her little volume "How to Help 
the Poor," representing an interest in the less fortunate 
which prepared her to become one of the founders of the 
Associated Charities of Boston, kept her long active and 
influential in the service of that organization, and made 
her at the last one of its generous benefactors. In 1895 
and 1900, respectively, appeared two more volumes of 
verse, "The Singing Shepherd and Other Poems," 
assembling the work of earlier and later years, and 
"Orpheus, a Masque," each strongly touched, like 
"Under the Olive," with the Grecian spirit. From 
"The Singing Shepherd" I cannot resist quoting one of 
the best things it contains — a sonnet, "Flamman- 
tis Moenia Mundi," under which, in my own copy of 
the book, I find the penciled note, written probably 



286 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

more than twenty years ago : "Mrs. Fields tells me that 
this sonnet came to her complete, one may almost say; 
standing on her feet she made it, but for one or two 
small changes, just as it is, in about fifteen minutes." 

I stood alone in purple space and saw 
The burning walls of the world, like wings of flame, 
Circling the sphere; there was no break nor flaw 
In those vast airy battlements whence came 
The spirits who had done with time and fame 
And all the playthings of earth's little hour; 
I saw them each, I knew them for the same. 
Mothers and brothers and the sons of power. 

Yet were they changed; the flaming walls haii burneil 

Their perishable selves, and there rcmaineil 

Only the pure white vision of the soul. 

The mortal part consumed, and swift returnetl 

Ashes to ashes; while unscathed, unstained, 

The immortal passed beyond the earth's control. 

I'or the rest, her writings may be said to have grown 
out of the life which the pages of her diary have pic- 
tured. The successive volumes were these : "Whittier : 
Notes of his Life and of his Friendship" (New York, 
1893); "A Shelf of Old Books" (New York, 1894); 
"Letters of Celia Thaxter" (edited with Miss Rose 
Lamb, Boston, 1895) ; "Authors and Friends" (Boston, 
1896); "Life and Letters of Harriet Bcecher Stowe" 
(Boston, 1897) ; "Nathaniel Hawthorne" (in the "Bea- 
con Biographies," Boston, 1899); "Charles Dudley 
Warner" (New York, 1909) ; and, after the death of 
the friend whose name appears above this chapter, 
"Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett" (Boston, 1911). 

This catalogue of publications is in itself a dry bit of 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 287 

reading, and to add the titles of all the books produced 
by Miss Jewett after 1881 would not enliven the record. 
But the lists, explicit and implicit, will serve at least 
to suggest the range and nature of the activities of 



/ic- '^/Wy /<!^J ^o3l ^f^f>oi ii^^ /^^ /E^*^^^>^**^ 
^ ^Ot-iJ ^^^ J^j>9, ^ A-ftea^f />y€^ )4r '^L '^^ 



7^ -^/y A4 ifi^ /5/v*^^^*«^^ ^U<^ f^c<:e^ •3^i^li,a«^ 

An autograph copy of Mrs. Fields' s '"''Flammayitis Moenia Mundi " 
bejore its final revision 

mind and spirit in which the two friends shared for 

many years. It is no wonder that Mrs. Fields, who 

abandoned the regular maintenance of her diary in the 

face of her husband's failing health, resumed it in later 

years only under the special provocations of travel. 

In its place she took up the practice of writing daily 

missives — sometimes letters, more often the merest 



288 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

notes — to Miss Jewett whenever they were separated. 
These innumerable little messages of affection con- 
tained frequent references to persons and passing events, 
but rather as memoranda for talk when the two friends 
should meet than as records at all resembling the ear- 
lier journals. Such local friends as Mrs. Pratt and Mrs. 
Bell, in whom the spirit and wit of their father, Ru- 
fus Choate, shone on for later generations; Mrs. Whit- 
man, mistress of the arts of color and of friendship; 
Miss Guiney, figuring always as "the Linnet," even as 
Mrs. Thaxter was "the Sandpiper"; Dr. Holmes, Phil- 
lips Brooks, "dear Whitticr" — these and scores of 
others, young and old, known and unknown to fame, 
people the scene which the little notes recall. There 
arc, besides, such visitors from abroad as Matthew Ar- 
nold and his wife, Mrs. Humphry Ward and her daugh- 
ter, M. and Mme. Brunetierc, and Mmc. Blanc ("Th. 
Bentzon"), whose article, "Condition de la Femme aux 
Etats-Unis," in the "Revue des Deux Mondes" for 
September, 1 894, could not have been written but for 
the knowledge of Boston acquired through a long visit 
to the house in Charles Street. Of the salon of her 
hostess she wrote: "Je voudrais essayer de pein- 
dre celui qui se rapproche le plus, par beaucoup de 
cotes, les salons de France de la meilleure epoque, le 
salon de Mrs. J. T. Fields." She goes on to paint it, 
and from the picture at least one fragment — apropos 
of the portraits in the house — should be rescued, if 
only for the piquancy conferred by Mme. Blanc's na- 
tive tongue upon a bit of anecdote: "Emerson realise 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 289 

bien, en physique, I'idee d'immaterialite que je me fal- 
sals de lui. Mrs. Fields me conte une jolie anecdote : 
vers la fin de sa vie, il fut prit d'un singulier acces de 
curiosite ; il voulut savoir une fois ce que c'etait le whis- 
ky et entra dans un bar pour s'en servir : — Vous vou- 
lez un verre d'eau, Mr. Emerson ? dit le garjon, sans 
lui donner le temps d'exprimer sa criminelle envie. 
Et le philosophe but son verre d'eau, . . . et il mourut 
sans connaitre le gout du whisky." 

But if the notes of Mrs. Fields to Miss Jewett, and 
Miss Jewett's own letters to her friend in Boston, do 
not provide any counterpart to the diaries which make 
up the greater portion of this book, there are, in the 
journals kept by Mrs. Fields on special occasions of 
travel, records of experiences shared by the two friends 
which should be given here. 

When they went to Europe together, as early as 1882, 
the two travellers were happily characterized by Whit- 
tier in a sonnet, "Godspeed," as 

her in whom 
All graces and sweet charities unite 
The old Greek beauty set in holier light ; 
And her for whom New England's byways bloom, 
Who walks among us welcome as the Spring, 
Calling up blossoms where her light feet stray. 

No effort or adventure seemed to daunt the compan- 
ions in their journeyings. There was an indomitable 
quality in Mrs. Fields which Miss Jewett used to as- 
cribe to her "May blood," with its strain of aboli- 
tionism, and it showed itself when she accepted with 



290 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

enthusiasm, and successfully urged Miss Jcwett to ac- 
cept, an invitation to make a two months' winter cruise 
in West Indian waters, in company with Mr. and Mrs. 
Aldrich, on the yacht Hermione of their friend, Henry 
L. Pierce. The diary of Mrs. Fields records discomforts 
and pleasures with an equal hand, and gives lively 
glimpses of island and ocean scenes. At Santo Do- 
mingo, for example, the President of the Republic of 
Haiti dined on the Hermione on St. Valentine's Day, 
1896, and talked in a manner to which the impending 
liberation of Cuba from the Spanish yoke may now be 
seen to have added some significance. 

Anything more interesting than his conversation 
[wrote Mrs. Fields] would be impossible to find. He 
ended just before we left the table by speaking of Cuba. 
He is inclined to believe that the day of Spain is over. 
The people are already conquerors in the interior and 
are approaching Havana. Spain will soon be compelled 
to retire to her coast defenses and she is sure to be driven 
thence in two years or sooner. Of course, if the Cubans 
arc recognized by the great powers they will triumph 
all the sooner. 

"Do these island republics take the part of Cuba?" 
someone asked. 

"I will tell you a little talc of a camel," he said, "if 
you will allow me — a camel greatly overladen who 
lamented his sad fate. *I am bent to the earth,' he 
said; 'everything is heaped upon me and I feel as if I 
could never rise again under such a load.* Upon his 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 291 

pack was seated a flea, who heard the lament of the 
camel. Immediately the flea jumped to the ground. 
* See 1 ' he said ; ' now rise, I have relieved you of my own 
weight.' 'Thank you, Mr. Elephant,' said the camel, 
as he glanced at the flea hopping away. The recognition 
of these islands would help Cuba about as much," he 
added laughingly. 

But the President of Haiti, concerning whom much 
more might be quoted, is less a part of the present 
picture than Thomas Bailey Aldrich, of whom Mrs. 
Fields wrote, February 21 : — 

T. B. A.'s wit and pleasant company never fail — 
he is so natural, finding fault at times, without being a 
fault-finder, and being crusty like another human crea- 
ture when out of sorts — but on the whole a most re- 
freshing companion, coming up from below every morn- 
ing with a shining countenance, his hair curling like a 
boy's, and ready for a new day. He said yesterday that 
he should like to live 450 years — "shouldn't you?" 
"No," I said; "I am on tip-toe for the flight." "Ah," 
he said with a visible shudder, "we know nothing about 
it 1 Oddly enough, I have strange impressions of hav- 
ing lived before — once in London especially — not at 
St. Paul's, or Pall Mall, or in any of the great places 
where I might have been deceived by previous imagina- 
tions, — not at all, — but among some old streets where 
I had never been before and where I had no associa- 
tions." He would have gone on in this vein and would 



i9:i MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

have drawn me into giving some reasons for my faith 
which would have been none to him, but fortunately 
we were interrupted. He is full of quips and cranks in 
talk — is a worshipper of the English language and a 
good student of Murray's Grammar, in which he faith- 
fully believes. His own training in it he values as much 
as anything which ever came to him. He picks up the 
unfortunates, of which I am chief, who say "people" 
meaning "persons," who say "at length" for "at last," 
and who use foolish redundancies, but I cannot seem to 
record his fun. He began to joke Bridget early in the 
voyage about the necessity of being tattooed when she 
arrived at the Windward Islands, like the rest of the 
crew ! Fancying that he saw a sort of half idea that he 
was in earnest, he kept it up and told her that the butter- 
mark of Ponkapog should be the device ! The matter 
had nearly blown over when yesterday he wanted her 
suddenly and called, " Bridget," at the gangway rather 
sharply. "Here, sir," said the dear creature running 
quickly to mount the stairs. "The tattoo-man is here," 
said T. B. With all seriousness Bridget paused a mo- 
ment, wavered, looked again, and then came on laugh- 
ing to do what he really wanted. "That man will be 
the death of me — so he will," said B. as she went away 
on her errand. She is his slave; gets his clothes and 
waits upon him every moment; but his fun and sweet- 
ness with her " deseunuie de service ^^ and more, charges 
it with pleasantness. 

T. B. A. is a most careful reader and a true reporter 
upon the few good books of which he is cognizant. He 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 293 

has read Froude's history twice through, and Queen 
Mary's reign three times. He has read a vast number 
of novels, hundreds and hundreds, — French and Eng- 
lish, — but his knowledge of French seems to stop there. 
He also once knew Spanish, but that seems to have 
dropped — he never, I think, could speak much of any 
language save his own. Being a master there is so much 
more than the rest of us achieve that we feel he has won 
his laurels. 

On a later journey, in 1898, Mrs. Fields and Miss 
Jewett, visiting England and France in company with 
Miss Jewett's sister and nephew, were on more famil- 
iar and more suitable ground — if indeed that word 
can be used even figuratively for the unstable deck of 
a yacht. In London there were many old and new 
friends to be seen. In Paris Mme. Blanc opened for the 
travellers the doors of many a salon not commonly 
accessible to visiting Americans. But from all the 
abundant chronicle of these experiences, it will be 
enough to make two selections. The first describes a 
visit to the Provencal poet. Mistral, with his "Boufflo 
Beel" dog and hat; the second, a glimpse of Henry 
James at Rye. 

It was in May of 1898, that Mrs. Fields and Miss 
Jewett, finding Paris cold and rainy, determined to 
strike for sunshine, and the South. A little journey 
into Provence, and a visit to Mistral, followed this de- 
cision. The following notes record the visit. 



294 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

A perfect time and perfect weather in which to see the 
country of Provence. Fields of great white poppies and 
other flowers planted for seed in this district made the 
way beautiful on either hand. Olive trees with rows of 
black cypress and old tiled-roofed farmhouses, and the 
mountains always on the horizon, filled the landscape. 
The first considerable house we reached was the home 
of the poet. A pretty garden which attracted our atten- 
tion with a rare eglantine called La Reine Joanne, and 
other charming things hanging over the wall made us 
suspicious of the poet's vicinity. Turning the corner 
of this garden and driving up a short road, we found 
the courtyard and door on the inner side as it were. 
We heard a barking dog. "Take care," said the driver, 
"there is a dangerous dog inside." We waited until 
Mistral himself came to meet us from the garden; he 
was much amused. There was an old dog tied, half 
asleep, on a bench and a young one by his side. He 
said laughing, "These are all, and they could not be 
less dangerous. The elder" (he let them loose while 
he spoke and they played about us), "the elder I call 
Houfl^e, from Boufflo Beel" (Mistral does not speak 
any English, nor does his wife) "and the reason is be- 
cause I happened to be in the neighborhood of Paris 
once just after Hurfalo Bill had passed on toward Calais 
with his troupe. I saw a little dog, unlike the dogs of 
our country, who seemed to be lost, but the moment he 
saw me, he thought I was 'Boufllo Beel' and adopted 
me for his master. You see I look like him," he said, 
putting his wide felt hat a little more on one side ! Yes, 




MISTRAL, MASTER OF -BOUFFLO REEL' 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 295 

we did think so. "Well, the little dog has been with us 
ever since. He possesses the most wonderful intelli- 
gence and understands every word we say. One day I 
said to him, 'What a pity such a nice dog as you should 
have no children !' A few days later the servant said to 
me, 'Bouffe has been away nearly two days, but he 
has now come back bringing his wife.' 'Ahl' I said, 
*take good care of them both.' In due time this other 
little dog, his son, arrived in the world,'and shortly after 
Bouffe carried his wife away again, but kept the little 
dog. He is a wonderful fellow, to be sure." 

We went into the house and sat down to talk awhile 
about poetry and books. There was a large book-case 
full of French and Provencal literature here, but it was 
rather the parlor and everyday sitting-room than his 
work-room. Unhappily, they have no children. Evi- 
dently they are exceedingly happy together and natur- 
ally do not miss what they have never had. She opened 
the drawing-room for us, which is the room of state. It 
is full of interesting things connected with Provence 
and their own life, but perfectly simple, in accord with 
the country-like fashion of their existence. There is 
a noble b^s-relief of the head of Mistral, the drum or 
"tambour" of the Felibre, or for the Farandole, and, 
without overloading, plenty of good things — photo- 
graphs, one or two pictures, not many, for the house is 
not that of a rich man, plaster casts, and one or two 
busts, — perhaps the presents of artists, — illustrations 
of "Mireio," and things associated with their individual 
lives or the life of Provence. Presently Mistral gave me 



296 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

his arm and we went across the hall. Standing in the 
place of honor opposite the front door and in the large 
corner made by the staircase, is a fine copy of the bust of 
Lamartine, crowned with an olive wreath. We paused 
a moment here while Mistral spoke of Lamartine, and 
always with the sincere reverence which he has ex- 
pressed in the poem entitled " Elcgie sur la mort de 
Lamartine^ . . . 

The dining-room was still more Provencal, if possible, 
than the rooms we had visited. The walls were white, 
which, with the closed green blinds, must give a pleas- 
ant light when the days are hot, yet bright even on grey 
days. Specimens of the pottery of the country hang 
around, decorated with soft colors. The old carved 
bread-mixing-and-holding affair, which belonged in 
every well-to-do house of the old time, was there, and 
one or two other old pieces of furniture, while the chairs, 
sofa, and table were of quaint shape, painted green with 
some decorations. 

The details are all petty enough, but they proved how 
sincerely Mistral and his wife love their country and 
their surroundings and endeavor to ennoble them and 
make the most of them. .After sitting at table and en- 
joying their hospitality, we went out again into the gar- 
den where Madame Mistral gathered "Nerto" (myrtle) 
for us, beside roses and other more beautiful but more 
formidable things. "Nerto "is the titleof one of his last 
books (I hear) and the wife doubtless believed that we 
should cherish a branch of her myrtle especially in mem- 
ory of the visit. She was quite right, but these things 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 297 

which are "to last" — how frail they are; the things 
that remain are those which are written on the heart. 

We cannot forget these two picturesque beings stand- 
ing in their garden, filling our hands with flowers and 
bidding us farewell. As we drove away into the sunny 
plain once more, we found it speaking to us with a 
voice of human kindness echoing from that poetic and 
friendly home. In a more personal vein, the address to 
Lamartine by Mistral expresses better his mood of the 
afternoon when we stood together looking at the bust 
and recalling each our personal remembrance of the 



An excursion from London, on September I2, de- 
voted to a day with Henry James, gave Mrs. Fields a 
memorable glimpse of the son of an old friend, and an 
honest pleasure in learning at first hand of his apprecia- 
tion of Miss Jewett's writings. 

Monday J September 13, 1898. — We left London 
about II o'clock for Rye, to pass the day with Mr. 
Henry James. He was waiting for us at the station 
with a carriage, and in five minutes we found ourselves 
at the top of a silent little winding street, at a green 
door with a brass knocker, wearing the air of impene- 
trable respectability which is so well known in England. 
Another instant and an old servant, Smith (who with 
his wife has been in Mr. James's service for 20 
years), opened the door and helped us from the car- 
riage. It was a prettv interior — large enough for ele- 



298 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

gance, and simple enough to suit the severe taste of a 
scholar and private gentleman. 

Mr. James was intent on the largest hospitality. 
We were asked upstairs over a staircase with a pretty 
balustrade and plain green drugget on the steps ; every- 
thing was of the severest plainness, but in the best 
taste, "not at all austere," as he himself wrote us. 

We soon went down again after leaving our hats, to 
find a young gentleman, Mr. McAlpine, who is Mr. 
James's secretary, with him, awaiting us. This young 
man is just the person to help Mr. James. He has a 
bump of reverence and appreciates his position and 
opportunity. We sat in the parlor opening on a pretty 
garden for some time, until Mr. James said he could 
not conceive why luncheon was not ready and he must 
go and inquire, which he ilid in a very responsible man- 
ner, and soon after Smith appeared to announce the 
feast. Again a pretty room and table. We enjoyed our 
talk together sincerely at lunchecMi and afterward 
strolled into the garden. The dominating note was 
dear Mr. James's pleasure in having a home of his own 
to which he might ask us. From the garden, of course, 
we could see the pretty old house still more satisfac- 
torily. An old brick wall concealed by vines and 
laurels surrounds the whole irregular domain ; a door 
from the garden leads into a paved courtyard which 
seemed to give Mr. James peculiar satisfaction; re- 
turning to the garden, and on the other side, at an angle 
with the house, is a building which he laughingly called 
the temple of the Muse. This is his own place par excel- 



Lamb House. 
Rye. 

Sussex. 



^<; 



^^^t^ ^>...^^ ..^i:.^-^^ i^ >^ '^^^"^'^M. 



Reduced jacsimtle oj postscript of a letter from Henry James, 

expressing the intention, which he could not fulfill, to provide 

an Introduction to the ''''Letters of Sarah Orne Jewett" 



joo MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

lence. A good writing-table and one for his secretary, a 
typewriter, books, and a sketch by Du Maurier, with 
a few other pictures (rather mementoes than works of 
art), excellent windows with clear light, such is the 
temple ! Evidently an admirable spot for his work. 

After we returned to the oarlor Mr. James took oc- 
casion to tell Sarah how deeolv and sincerely he appre- 
ciated her work; how he re-reads it with increasing ad- 
miration. "It is foolish to ask, I know," he said, "but 
were you in just such a place as vou describe in the 
'Pointed Firs'?" "No," she said, "not precisely; the 
book was chiefly written before I visited the locality 
itself." "And such an island?" he continued. "Not 
exactly," she said again. "Ah! I thought so," he said 
musingly; and the language — "It is so absolutely true 
— not a word overdone — such elegance and exactness." 
"And Mrs. Dennet — how admirable she is," he said 
again, not waiting for a reply. I need not say they 
were very much at home together after this. 

Meanwhile the carriage came again to the door, for 
he had made a plan to take us on a drive to Winchel- 
sea, a second of the Cinq Portes, Rye itself also being 
one. The sea has retreated from both these places, 
leaving about two miles of the Romney Marsh between 
them and the shore. Nothing could be more like some- 
thing bom of the imagination than the old city of VVin- 
chelsea. . . . Just outside the old gate looking towards 
Rye and the sea from a lonely height is the cottage 
where Ellen Terry has found a summer resting-place 
and retirement. It is a true home for an artist — nothing 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 301 

could be lovelier. Unhappily she was not there, but we 
were happy to see the place which she described to us 
with so great satisfaction. 

From Winchelsea Mr. James drove us to the station, 
where we took the train for Hastings. He had brought 
his small dog, an aged black and tan terrier, with him 
for a holiday. He put on the muzzle, which all dogs 
just now must wear, and took it off a great many times 
until, having left it once when he went to buy the tick- 
ets and recovered it, he again lost it and it could not be 
found ; so as soon as he reached Hastings, he took a car- 
riage again to drive us along the esplanade, but the first 
thing was to buy a new muzzle. This esplanade is three 
miles long, but we began to feel hke tea, so having 
looked upon the sea sufficiently from this decidedly un- 
romantic point of view, we went into a small shop and 
enjoyed more talk under new conditions. "How many 
cakes have you eaten?" "Ten," gravely replied Mr. 
James — at which we all laughed. "Oh, I know," said 
the girl with a wise look at the desk. "How do you sup- 
pose they know.^" said Mi. James musingly as he 
turned away. "They always do!" And so on again 
presently to the train at Hastings, where Mr. McAl- 
pine appeared at the right instant. Mr. James's train 
for Rye left a few moments before ours for London. He 
took a most friendly farewell and having left us to Mr. 
McA. ran for his own carriage. In another five minutes 
we too were away, bearing our delightful memories of 
this meeting. 



302 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

Not because they record momentous events and en- 
counters, but merely as little pictures of the life which 
Mrs. Fields and Miss Jewett led together, these passages 
are brought to light. They are the last to be presented 
here. For more than another decade beyond the summer 
of 1898, Miss Jewett, sorely invalided through the final 
years as the result of a carriage accident, remained the 
central personal fact in Mrs. Fields's interest and affec- 
tions. Soon after her death, in June, 1909, Mrs. Fields 
wrote about her to a common friend: "Of my dear 
Sarah — I believe one of her noblest qualities was her 
great generosity. Others could only guess at this, but 
I was allowed to know it. Not that she made gifts, but 
a wide sympathy was hers for every disappointed or 
incompetent fellow creature. It was a most distinguish- 
ing characteristic! Governor Andrew spoke of Judge 

B once as *A friend to every man who did not 

need a friend' ! Sarah's quick sympathy knew a friend 
was in need before she knew it herself; she was the 
spirit of beneficence, and her quick delicate wit was 
such a joy in daily companionship!" 

Of this daily companionship an anonymous contrib- 
utor to the "Atlantic Monthly" for August, 1909, had 
been a fortunate witness. I need not ask his permission 
to repeat a portion of what he then wrote : — 

"There is but one familiar portrait of Miss Jewett. 
It has been so often reprinted that many who have seen 
it, even without seeing her, must think of her as im- 
mune from change, blessed with perpetual youth, with 
a gracious, sympathetic femininity, with an air of 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 303 

breeding and distinction quite independent of shifting 
fashions. 

"This portrait is intimately symbolic of her work. It 
typifies with a rare faithfulness the quality of all the 
products of her pen. In them one found, and finds, the 
same abiding elements of beauty, sympathy, and dis- 
tinction. The element of sympathy — perhaps the 
greatest of these — found its expression in a humor that 
provoked less of outward laughter than of smiles within, 
and in a pathos the very counterpart of this delicate 
quality. The beauty and the distinction may be less 
capable of brief characterization, but they pervaded her 
art. . . . 

"This work of hers, in dealing with the New England 
life she knew and loved, was essentially American, as 
purely indigenous as the pointed firs of her own coun- 
tryside. The art with which she wrought her native 
themes was limited, on the contrary, by no local bound- 
aries. At its best it had the absolute quality of the 
highest art in every quarter of the globe. And the spirit 
in which she approached her task was as broad in its 
scope and sympathy as her art in its form. It was pre- 
cisely this union of what was at once so clearly Ameri- 
can and so clearly universal that distinguished her 
stories, in the eyes of both editor and reader, as the 
best — so often — in any magazine that contained them, 

"Her constant demand upon herself was for the best. 
There were no compromises with mediocrity, either in 
her tastes or in her achievement s. It was the best as- 
pect of New England character and tradition on which 



304 MEMORIES OF A HOSTESS 

her vision steadily dwelt. She was satisfied with noth- 
ing short of the best in her interpretation of New Eng- 
land life. The form of creative writing in which she 
won her highest successes — the short story — is the 
form in which Americans have made their most dis- 
tinctive contributions to English literature; and her 
place with the few best of these writers appears to be 
secure. 

"If the familiar portrait typifies her work, it is equally 
true to the person herself. The quick, responsive spirit 
of youth, with all its sincerity, all its enjoyment in 
friendship or whatever else the day might hold, was an 
immutable possession. So were all the other qualities 
for which the features spoke. Through the recent years 
of physical disability, due in the first instance to an acci- 
dent so gratuitous that it seemed to her friends unendur- 
able, there was a noble patience, a sweet endurance, 
that could have sprung only from an heroic strain of 
character." 

For nearly six years Mrs. Fields survived Miss Jew- 
ett, bereaved as by the loss of half her personal world, 
yet indomitable of spirit and energy, so long as her phys- 
ical forces would permit any of the old accustomed exer- 
cises of hospitality and friendship. The selection and 
publication of Miss Jewett's letters was a labor of love 
which continued the sense of companionship for the 
first two of the remaining years. Through the four 
others there was a failing of bodily strength, though not 
at all of mental and spiritual eagerness; and in her out- 
ward mien through all the later years, there was that 



SARAH ORNE JEWETT 305 

which must have recalled to many the ancient couplet : — 

No Spring, nor summer's beauty hath such grace 
As I have seen in one autumnal face. 

Towards the end there was a brief return to the keep- 
ing of a sporadic diary. Its final words, written Janu- 
ary 25, 1913, were these: "The days go on cheerfully. 
I have just read Mark Twain's Hfe, the life of a man 
who had greatness in him. I am now reading his 
'Joan of Arc' I hope to wait as cheerfully as he did 
for the trumpet call and as usefully, but I am ready." 

When Mrs. Fields died and the Charles Street door 
was finally closed, at the beginning of 191 5, the world 
had entered upon its first entire year of a new era. It is 
an era as sharply separated from that of her intimate 
contemporaries, the American Victorians, as any new 
from any old order. The figures of every old order take 
their places by degrees as "museum pieces," objects of 
curious and sometimes condescending study. But let us 
not be too sure that in parting with the past we have let 
it keep only that which can best be spared. We would 
not wish them back, those Victorians of ours. They 
were the product of their own day, and would be hardly 
at ease — poor things — in our twentieth-century Zion. 
Even some of us who inhabit it gain a sense of rest in 
reentering their quiet, decorous dwelling-places. As we 
emerge again from one of them, may it be with a re- 
newed allegiance to those lasting " things that are more 
excellent," which belong to every generation of civilized 
men and women. 



INDEX 



Page numbers set in bold-faced type indicate, generally speaking, 
the more important references to the persons concerned. As a com- 
plete list of the pages on which Mr. or Mrs. Fields, or both, are 
mentioned would include substantially the whole book, only a few 
of the more significant references to them have been selected for 
inclusion under their names. 



Adams, Annie, marries J.T. F., ii. 

And see Fields, Annie. 
Adams, Charles F., Jr., 278. 
Adams, Lizzie, 20. 
Adams, Zabdiel B., 11. 
Agassiz, Alexander, 256, 257, 258. 
Agassiz, Elizabeth C, 159. 
Agassiz, Louis, 48, 93, 105, 141. 
Alcott, A. Branson, 63, 72-77, 81, 82, 

95. 
Alcott, Mrs. A. Branson, 63. 
Alcott, Louisa M., 73. 
Alden, Henry M., 57, 89. 
Aldrich, Lilian (Woodman), 126, 203, 

229, 290. 
Aldrich, Thomas B., 11, 116, 126 and 

n., 127, 197/., 226-229, 290, 291- 

293. 
Andrew, John A., 11, 36«., 302. 
Andrew, Mrs. John A., 28, 213, 214. 
Appleton, Thomas Gold, 115, 116, 

126, 152, 154, 209, 211, 212, 213, 

216, 246, 253. 
Aristotle, 133. 
Arnold, Matthew, 288. 
Astor, John Jacob, 76, 77. 
Atlantic Monthly, 6, 13, 14, 107, in, 

191 «., 209, 233, 252, 281, 282, 302. 

Bacon, Francis, Lord, 1 1 2. 
Baker, Sir Samuel, 149. 
Barbauld, Anna L. A., loi. 
Barker, Fordyce, 151, 185. 
Barlow, Francis C, 61. 
Barrett, Lawrence, 240. 
Bartol, Cyrus A., 114, 215, 239. 
Beal, James H., 143. 



Beal, Louisa (Adams), 42, 143. 

Beal, Thomas, 199. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, 89, 224, 263, 

267-269, 270. 
Bell, Helen (Choate), 98, 143, 288. 
Bellows, Henry W., 199. 
Bentzon, Th. See Blanc, Marie T. 
Bigelow, George T., 36. 
Bigelow, Mr. and Mrs., I43, 144, 
Blagden, Isa, 260. 
Blake, Harrison G. O., 89, 90. 
Blanc, Marie Therese, 288, 289, 293. 
Blessington, Countess of, 274. 
Blumenbach, Johann F., 128, 129. 
Boccaccio, Giovanni, 58. 
Booth, Edwin, 28, 198-203, 210, 

240-241. 
Booth, J. Wilkes, 28, 198, 199. 
Booth, Junius Brutus, 196. 
Booth, Mary (Mrs. Edwin), 241. 
Booth, Mary A. (Mrs. J. B.), 198. 
Boswell, James, 60. 
Boutwell, George S., 89. 
Bradford, George, 81, 82, 90, 
Bright, John, 177. 
Bronte, Charlotte, 131, 266. 
Brooks, Phillips, 36 «., 94, 288. 
Brown, John, Pet Marjorie, 59. 
Browne, Charles F., 21. 
Brownell, Henry Howard, 29. 
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 270. 
Browning, Robert, 43, 142, 260, 269. 
Bruneticre, Ferdinand, 288. 
Bryant, William Cullen, 239, 257. 
"Buffalo Bill." See Cody, W. F. 
Bugbee, James M., 126. 
Bull, Ole, 225, 



3o8 



INDEX 



Burr, Aaron, 270, 271. 
Butler, Benjamin F., 95. 

Cabot, Mrs., 216. 

Caldcron dc la Barca, Pedro, no. 

Carleton, G. \V., 233. 

Carl> le, Jane Welsh, 75, I42, 220. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 73, 75, 79, 89, 14I, 

I42, 165, 167, 190, 191, 220. 
Channing, W. Kllcry, 81, 98, 114. 
Cheney, Arthur, 216. 
Chenev, F.iinah D., 114. 
Chiid.Lydia M., 265, 266. 
Childs, George W., 64. 
Choate, Rufus, 288. 
Cicero, 45. 
Clapp, Henry, 185. 
Clarke, James Freeman, 72, 114. 
Clarke, Sara, 205. 
Clemens, Samuel L., 232, 2^^, 244- 

257, 305. 
Clemens, Mrs. S. L., 245 j^. 
Cobden, Richard, 177. 
Cody, William F., 294. 
Colchester (medium), 168, 169, 170. 
Collins, Charles, i6«, 
Collins, Mrs. Charles (daughter of 

Dickens), 190. 
Collins,W.Wilkic, 145,189. 
Collyer, Robert, 215. 
Conway, Juilge, 219. 
Cooke, George W., laa, 
Crabl>c, (Jcorge, 186. 
Crawford, Thomas, 264. 
Crawford, Mrs. Thomas, 264, 265. 
Cubas, Isal)clla, 22, 23. 
Curtis, George Wiljiani, 14, 23> IM, 

1 88 
Curtis, Mrs. G. W., 14. 
Cushing, Caleb, 266, 267. 
Cushman, Charlotte, 123,219-222. 

Dana, Charlotte, i6i. 

Dana, Richard H., Jr., 93, 95, 116, 

144, 2<0, 27«. 
Dana, Mrs. R. H., Jr., 92, 93. 
Dana, Sallic, 161. 
Daniel, (Jeorge, 95. 
Dante, .Alighieri, 258. 
Davidson, Fxlith, 99. 
Davis, George T., 19, 20. 
Dennet, of mc Nation, 1 27. 



Dc Normandie, James, 81. 

Dewey, Dr., 219. 

Dickens, Bessy, 194. 

Dickens, Catherine (Hogarth), 160. 

Dickens, Charles, in America, 138- 

188; his readings, I40, I44, 145, 

152, 157, 17', >72. 181, 182; 

letters of, to J. T. F., 150, n^i; 

' -. 32, 33, n 8, 1 19, I 20, r35-195, 

209, 210, 211, 212, 223,240. 
Dickens, Charles, Jr., 194. 
Dickens, John, 175. 
Dickens, Mary: quoted, 193; I40, 

164. 169, 194. 
Dickinson, Lowes, 2^2. 
Dodge, Mary Abigail, I44, 220, 221. 
Dolby, George, 136, 138, 139, I40, 

143, 144, 149, 150, 161, \hi, 165, 

1^)6, 171, 173, 178, 180, 185, 189, 

190. 
Donne, Father, 102. 
Donne, lohn, 95. 
Dorr, Charles, I49, 209. 
Dorr, Mrs. Charles, 35, I49, 150, 

209, 215. 
Drydcn, John, 109. 
Duffcrin, Karl of, 163. 
Dumas, .Alex., 21 1. 
Dumas, A]cx. ,fi/s., 211. 
Du Mauricr, George, 300. 
Dunn, Rev. Mr., 122, 

P'.ccE Homo, 167. 

Kliot, Charles W., 41. 

Kliotson, Dr., 182, 183. 

Kllsler, Fanny, 24. 

Kmerson, Kdith, 89, 91. And see 

Forbes, Edith (Emerson). 
P'merson, Edward W., 94, 103, 104. 
Emerson, Ellen, 88, 94, 96, 97, 99, 

ICO, 103, 104. 
Emerson, Lilian (Jackson), letter of, 

to Mrs. F., 88; 61, 62, 89, 94,^)5, 

99, 101, 203. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, letter of, to 

J.T. F., 87; 14, 15/;., 24, 61, 62, 

67, 73. 74, 79, 83 84, 8fr-105, 130, 

131, 141, 158, 161, 165, 203, 206, 

238, 239, 289. 
Emerson, W. R., 219. 
England, Hawthorne on, Kg, 60. 
Everett, Edward, 116, 270, 271. 



INDEX 



309 



Everett, William, 270. 
Every Saturday, 1 97. 

Falstaff, Sir John, i 10. 

Fechter, Charles, 139, 146, 148, 149, 

159) i79> i90> '9') 209 _^. 
Fiefd, John W., 124. 
Field, Kate, 152, 259, 260, 261. 
Fielding, Henry, Tom Jones, no, 

Fields, Annie, disposition of her 
papers, 3; her journals, 4, 12; 
H. James quoted on, 5 ; marriage, 
1 1 ; her neighbors, 1 1 ; and Leigh 
Hunt, 15, 16; letter of Holmes to, 
on her memorial volume, 50, 51 ; 
her books, 53 ; H. James, Sr., 
quoted on, 85; "Thunderbolt 
Hill," loi ; her character as re- 
vealed in her diary, 132-134; her 
championship of Dickens, 156, 
157; the variety of her friend- 
ships, JgSJf.; her ode for the in- 
stallation of the Music Hall organ, 
219, 220, 221 ; with J. T. F., 
visits Mark Twain at Hartford, 
ijfSff.; and the cause of equal 
rights for women, 275, 278 ; her 
skill in digesting reports of conver- 
sations, 279, 280; her intimate 
friendship with Miss Jewett, 281 
ff.; her poetry, 285, 286; list of 
her published prose works, 286 
friends of her later years, 288 
travelling with Miss Jewett,289^. 
and the President of Haiti, 290, 
291; visits Mistral, 293-297: 
visits H. James, Jr., at Rye, 297 
301 ; quoted, on Miss Jewett, 302 , 
her last years, 304, 365 ; the^last 
words in her diary, 305; her 
death, 305. James T. Fields: 
Biographical Notes, 4, 13, 16, 50; 
Authors and Friends, 4, 31, 86, 87, 
105, 129, 134, 279; A Shelf of Old 
Books, I 2 k.; Hawthorne, '^4. 
Fields, Eliza J. (Willard), ik 
Fields, James T., early days in 
Boston, 10, II, 196 ; marries Annie 
Adams, 1 1 ; their home on Charles 
St., II, 12, 137, 138, 218, 219; 
editor of the Atlantic, 14, 58, 67, 



87, 107, 111,119, 191 «., 233, 282; 
as raconteur, 21 ; Holmes quoted 
on his position in the literary 
world, 34; retires from business, 
40; H. James, Sr., quoted on, 85 ; 
his love of the theatre and stage 
folk, 196, 197; his death, 280; 
fosters Mrs. F.'s friendship with 
Miss Jewett, 283. 

Yesterdays with Authors, 4, 54, 
55, 62, 137, 176 w., 190. 

Fields, Osgood & Co., 10. 

Fiske, John, 48. 

Forbes, Edith (Emerson), 91. 

Forbes, William H., 91. 

Forrest, Edwin, 207, 218. 

Forrest, Mrs. Edwin, 218. 

Forster, John, 154, 160, 163. 171, 
213. 

Foster, Charlotte, 259. 

Frothingham, Octavius B., 274. 

Froude, James A., 68, 293. 

Fuller, Margaret, 24, 239. 

Fulton, J. D., 122. 

Furness, William H., loi w.,102 , 103. 

Garrett (impressario), 214. 
Gaskell, Elizabeth C. S., 131. 
Godwin, Mrs. William, 16. 
Goethe, Johann W. von, WHhelm 

Meister, 132, 133. 
Gorges, Sir F., 74. 
Gounod, Charles, 44. 
Grant, Julia Dent, 159. 
Grant, Ulysses S., 59, 262. 
Grau, Maurice, 222. 
Greene, George W., 19, 20, 44, 45, 

47, 126, 141, 256, 258, 260. 
Gregory, Lady, 218. 
Guiney, Louise Imogen, 288. 

Haiti, President of, 290, 291. 

Hale, Edward E., 93. 

Hale, John P., 261. 

Hallam, Henry, 89. 

Hamilton, Gail. See Dodge, Mary 

Abigail. 
Hammersley, Mr., 247. 
Harper's Weekly, 14. 
Harris, William T., 81. 
Harte, F. Bret, 117, 233-243. 
Harte, Mrs. F. B., 239, 240. 



3IO 



INDEX 



Harvard College, Commemoration 
I3ay at, 36 n. 

Hawthorne, Julian, 15, 144. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, death of, 
27, 28,67; letters at, to J. T. F., 
';4, I?. 5^; his last letter, 65-^)7; 
i3, U, 15 and n., 18, ly. p, 32, 
3.1, 54-72, 97, 105, I 27, 236.' 

Hawthorne, S<jphia (Pealxidy), let- 
ter tr) Mrs. F. on Hawthorne, 70- 
72; 61,65,66,67,68,91,144,246. 

Hawthorne, Una, 15, 97, 221. 

Hawthorne, E. M., sister of Nathan- 
iel, 69, 

Hayes, Isaac I., 33, 34. 

Hcrl>crt, George, 95. 

Hcrrick, Robert, 95. 

Higginson, Thomas W., 114. 

Hill, Thomas, 92. 

Hillard, George S., 17, 18, 19, I43. 

Hoar, Kbcnezcr R., 37, 90, 91, I4I. 

Hogarth, Gcorgina, quoted, 193, 
194; 140, 155, 165, 195. 

Holmes, .Amelia (Jackson), 30, 34, 
39, 40, 4". S'. 'SJ, 203, 213, 214, 
221. 

Holmes, Oliver Wcmlell, his rela- 
tions with the Kieldscs, generally, 
17-52; letters of. to J. T. F., 17. 
49, and to Mrs. F., 50: 11, 13,54, 
90, 94, 96, no, 1 1 1 n., 115, 116, 
117, 118, i3<, 141, 142, 203, 205, 

20^>, 207, 208, 221, 256, 257, 273, 
288. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 21,31. 
Home (medium), 163, 168. 
Horace, 238. 
H<iwe, jufia Waril, 9, 10, 61, 90, 1 14 

and n., 221. 
Howe, Laura (Mrs. Richards), 150. 
Howe, Samuel G., 219, 273. 
Howells, William D., 38, 116, 166. 
Howes, Miss, 236. 
Howisfin, George H., 81. 
Hunt, Henry, 48. 
Hunt, Ixrigh, 15, 16, 58, 122. 
Hunt, T. Sterrv, 199. 
Hunt. William' M., 9^^, 97-99, 230, 

232. 
Hunt. Mrs. W. M.. 9^, 98, 222, 23a 
Hyacinthc, Pcre, 44. 



Incelow, Jean, 142, 

Jackson, Charles T., 94 and n. 

James, Alice, 77, 81, 83. 

James, George Ablwt, 42. 

James, Henrv, Sr., letter of, to 
J. T. F., 81, and to Mrs. F., 83, 
K5; 72-85. 

James, Mrs. Henry, 75, j-;, 81. 

James, Henry. Jr.. ijuoted, 6, 7, 137, 
281; letter of. to author, 8, 9; 
119, 120,297 301. 

Jan (li<K)th's servant), 200, 202. 

Jefferson, Joseph. 203-208, 247. 

Jewett, Sarah Orne, her intimate 
relations with Mrs. F., 28IJf.,302- 
304; her early days, 281, 282; 
ncr literary work, 28:-284; cor- 
resix)ndencc with Mrs. F., 288, 
289; H. James on her work, 30x3; 
her death, 302; 12, 50. 

Johns(jn, Andrew, impeachment of, 
1 5'>; :6i, 26:, 263. 

Johnson. Samuel, 60. 

Jonvjn, Ben. 96. 

Julius Ca-sar, 45. 

Keats, John, 43, 68, 206, 207. 
Kellogg, Klijah, 271, 272. 
KemMe, Charles, Hy6. 
Kcmble, Frances Anne, J 96, 222, 

223. 224. 
Kcnnard, Mr., 267, 268. 
King, Preston, 262, 263. 
Kirkup. Seymour S., 258. 
Knowlton, Helen M., 232. 

I^MARTINE, AlPHONSE DE, 296, 297. 

Lamb, Charles, 270. 

I^ndor, Walter Savage, 259-261. 

L.ingdon,Mr., Mark Twain's father- 
in-law, 245. 

Langdon, Mrs., 246. 

Larcom, Lucy, 70. 

I^throp, George P., 97. 

Lafhrop, Rose (Hawthorne), quoted, 
^7".; 97, '44- 

I^ar, Exlward, 280. 

I^clercq, Carlotta, 2l6. 

I^maTtrc, Frederick, 178, 179, 180, 
211. 



INDEX 



3" 



Lincoln, Abraham, assassination of, 
28, 198; 55, 56,77,262,263. 

Livermore, Mary A., 275-278. 

Locke, David R., 33. 

Longfellow, Alice, 42, 96, 224. 

Longfellow, Charles, 128, 216. 

Longfellow, Edith, 42, 213, 214. 

Longfellow, Mrs. Ernest W., 42. 

Longfellow, Henry W., 13, 19, 23> 
34, 35, 39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 
48, 60 and «., 90, 96, 97, 98, 99, 
109, 115, 116, 117, 119, 123, 124, 
125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 141, 144, 
152, 153, 159, 160, 161, 172, 205, 
206, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212 and 
w., 213, 214, 215, 216, 222, 223, 
224, 243, 256, 257, 258, 273. 

Longfellow, Mrs. H. W., 55, 223. 

Longfellow, Samuel, 42, 2i2«. 

Loring, Charles G., 36 n. 

Lowell, Frances (Dunbar), 123, 124. 

Lowell, James Russell, letters of, to 
J. T. F., 107, 108, 112, 113, 120, 
141 «. ; 5, 13, 33,34, -^i;, 36«., 90, 
92, 93, 94, 95, 104, 105, 106, 107 
ff., 116, 117, 123, 124, 126, 127, 
149, 159, 163, 164, 166, 243, 273. 

Lowell, Mabel, 107, 113, 123, 124, 
149. 

Lunt, George, 214. 

Luther, Martin, 89. 

Lytton, Edward Bulwer, Lord, 168, 
I76,;i77. 

Macready, William, 218. 
Maistre, Joseph de, 221. 
Mars, Anne F. H., 210, 211. 
Mathews, Charles, 207. 
Merivale, Herman, 95. 
Miller, Joaquin, 43, 126. 
Milton, John, 74. 
Mistral, Frederic, 293-297. 
Mistral, Mme. Frederic, 295, 296, 

297. 
Mitchell, Donald G., 185. 
Mitford, Mary R., 98. 
Montaigne, Michel de, 112, 238, 239. 
Morton, VV. T. G., 94 and n. 
Motley, J. Lothrop, 37. 
Mott, Lucretia C, 74. 
Murdoch, James E., 217, 218. 



Music Hall, Boston, great organ in, 
219, 220, 221. 

"Nasby, Petroleum V." 6"^^ Locke, 
D. R. 

Nichol, Professor, 90. 
Nilsson, Christine, 214, 224-226. 
Norton, Caroline (Sheridan), 46. 
Norton, Charles Eliot, 92, 103, 104, 

141, 144, 172, 185, 187. 
Norton, Mrs. C. E., 163. 

O'Brien, Fitz- James, 227-229. 
O'Connell, Daniel, 173, 176, 177. 
Orsay, Count d', 145. 
Osgood, James R., 116, 136, 151, 
153, 161, 162, 165, 166, 167, 185. 

Parker, Harvey D., 206. 
Parkman, Francis, 104, 105. 
Parkman, Mrs. Francis, 35. 
Parkman, George, murder of, 153. 
Parsons, Thomas W., 208, 214. 
Parton, James, no, m, 232. 
Peabody, Elizabeth, 82, 119. 
Pedro, Dom, Emperor of Brazil, 1 27, 

128. 
Perabo, Ernst, 224. 
Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart, 275. 
Phi Beta Kappa, Harvard (1868), 

36, 37; 92- 

Phillips, Wendell, 89, 114. 

Phipps, Colonel, 188, 189. 

Pickwick, Mr., 11 1. 

Pierce, Franklin, Hawthorne's loy- 
alty to, 13, 14, 15.; 57, 58,67. 

Pierce, Mrs. Franklin, death of, 57, 
58. 

Pierce, Henry L., 229, 290. 

Poore, Ben Perley, 266. 

Pratt, Mrs. Ellerton, 288. 

Prescott, Harriet (Mrs.Spofford), 58. 

Putnam, George, 36 w., 213. 

Putnam, John P., 221. 

QuiNCY, Edmund, 86, 273. 
Quincy, Josiah, 85, 275, 276, 277. 
Quincy, Josiah P., 86, 92, 93. 
Quincy, Mrs. Josiah P., 92. 
Quixote, Don, no. 



312 



INDEX 



Radical Clitb, 114. 
Raymond, John i"., 253. 
Read, John M., 31, 32. 
Read, T. Buchanan, 44. 
Reade. Charles, 146. 
Rip Van Winkle, iii. 
Ripley, Miss, 88. 
Ripley, Mrs., 91. 
Ristori, Adelaide, 222. 
Rogers, Samuel, 185. 
Rossctti, Christina, <>7 
Rowsc, Samuel \V., 1 52. 
Russell, Thomas, 261. 

Sanborn, F. B., 68. 

Saturday Club, 104, 105, 116 and n. 

Schur/, Carl, 266. 

Scott-Siddons, Mrs., no. 

Seward, William H., 28, 219, 267. 

Shaw, Ixmuel, 232. 

Shaw, Robert Cj., I4, 24. 

Shelley. Percy B., 16. 

Sherman, William T., 7-. 

ShicI, Mr., 173, 176. 

Silsl>cc, Mrs., 9>, 143- 

Smith, Alexander, 1-, 19. 

Smith, Samuel F., 47. 

Smith, Sydney, 89, 2«7. 

Somerset, Duchess o^ 46. 

Stanley, Fxlward Ci. S.S. (aftcnvard 

14th F.arl of Derby), 173, 1 74, 1 75. 
Stanton, F^lwin M., 267. 
Stci>hen, l.eslic, 95. 
Sterling, John, 75. 
Stone, I.ucy, 1 14. 
Story, William W., 116. 
Stotharil, Thomas, 190. 
Stowc, Calvin F., 272, 
Stowe, "(icorgie," 38, 39. 
Stowe, Harriet Becchcr, 38, 39, 61, 

191 and «., 2^>8, 272. 
Sumner, Charles, 42, 44, 45, 46, 48, 

77, 105, 219,258-267. 

Tavlor, Bayard, 109, 1 10, 1 1 1, 1 1^', 

117, 118, 119, 228, 26*1. 
Taylor, Mrs. Bayard, 109, no, ni. 
Tennent, Sir Fmerson. 153. 
Tcnnvson, Alfred, Ixird, 254, 279. 
Tennyson, Lady, 279. 



Terry, Ellen, 218, 300, 301. 

Thackeray, William M., 32, 33, n i, 
I ?4, 2^6. 

Thaxtcr, Cclia, 98, 129-131, 152, 
154. 2«8. 

Thompson, Launt, 198. 

Thorcau, Helen, 62, 74. 

Thnreau, Henry D., 14, 62, 68, 74, 
89, 90. 

Thoreau, Sophia, 68. 

Thoreau, Mrs. (mother of H. D.T.), 
6:, 68, 74. 

Ticknor, William D., 63/. 

Tick nor and Fields, 10. 

Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 17. 

Towne, Alice, 45. 

Townc, Helen, 45. 

Townshend, Chaunccy, 169. 

Trimble, Colonel, 273. 

Twain, Mark. See Clemens, Sam- 
uel L. 

Upham, J. Baxter, 221 and n. 

Vai'Ohan, Hekrv, 74, 81, 95. 
Viardot-Garcia, Michelle F. P., 225. 
Victoria, Queen, 1 87, 1 88. 
Vicuxtcmps, Henri, 225. 

Ward, Artemus. See Browne, 

Charles F. 
Ward, Mary A. (Mrs. Humphry), 

288. 
Wanl, Samuel, 90. 
Warren, William, 203, 205, 206. 
Washington, Cicorgc, 259. 
Wasson, David A., n4. 
Watcrston, Mrs., 24. 
Watts, Isaac, loi. 
Webster, John W.. 153. 
Whipple, Edwin P., 20. 
White, .Andrew D., 92. 
Whitman, Sarah, 288. 
Whitney, .Anne, loi, 102, 206. 
Whitticr, Elizal>eth, 2i;9. 
Whitticr, John G., 39, 40, 68, 70, 

n4, 129, 130, 131, 161, 222, 244, 

288 
Willard, Eliza J. See Fields, Eliza 

J. (Willard). 



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